


I Will Let You Drag Me Into Hel

by misreall



Series: Loki And Nora's Infinity Stone Playlist [11]
Category: Loki: Agent of Asgard, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor - All Media Types, Tom Hiddleston Fandom
Genre: Anal Play, Angst and Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Infidelity, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Light BDSM, Memory Loss, Mildly Dubious Consent, Oral Sex, Rough Kissing, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Sex, Sex Magic, Tender Sex, Thor Ragnarok AU, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-01-31 17:12:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 38,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12686541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misreall/pseuds/misreall
Summary: An AU of Thor Ragnarok, set in the Infinity Stone Playlist Series.





	1. I Have Been Falling

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place twenty years after the beginning of the series.

He was falling again.  
He had not jumped.  
He had not been pushed.  
He had fallen.  
Sometimes it seemed as if he never stopped falling, one way or another.  
He was covered in his enemies ichor, grey and stinking.  
He was covered in his own blood, which froze to his skin like armour.  
He was covered in her blood.  
He screamed until everything was gone from within him and the void ate all of that as it ate everything else.

Nora woke alone in a quiet, dark room that felt vast and empty.  
She was laying on some sort of elevated cot, or a surgical table.  
Sitting slowly, expecting her body to hurt, or at least not respond very well, she did find herself a little light headed but otherwise fine. Her feet didn’t touch the ground and there was a soft slither of cloth over her body. While she had been unconscious she had been dressed in a long, waistless dress of heavy silk with thick embroidery around the cuffs and hem so it rustled when she kicked her legs.  
She bunched the fabric up so she could reach underneath and touch her stomach. No bandage, no pain, no scar. In fact her skin seemed slightly smoother and firmer than it had been in a while.  
In the dim room she could see some glowing things that looked to be part of a large, mechanical engine, and the faint outline of a massive doorway.  
Hopping down made her light-headedness worse, and she grabbed the metal table she had been laying on for support. And then, feeling a hand on her arm to steady her, screamed and jumped, throwing an elbow back into something hard.  
“Be careful, Ms. Walsh, it would not do for you to harm yourself after all of the effort the healers put into saving your life. It was a … near thing,” said a deep, nearly theatrical in quality man’s voice. A voice that expected to be obeyed, that expected it’s every word to be treated as law.  
No. As sacred.  
Nora turned so she was facing her father-in-law.  
He was not as tall as either Thor or Loki, but was broader and rather than having that look of splendid statuary like his sons, he reminded her of a fortress - crumbling from age, besieged, but still formidable. It was strange, but the calculating look in his eye was far more like something she would expect to see from her husband than from his brother.  
He waited for her to speak. His eye scanning her with an almost insulting curiosity.  
She waited for him to speak. Staring frankly at him, not trying to hide her dislike.  
They both waited for quite a while, but Nora’s curiosity got the better of her and she gave in. He’d had thousands of years more to practice the silent treatment than she had, not to mention being a parent, so finally she caved.  
“Where are your ravens?”  
“I- what?” Clearly it was not what he had expected her to say, and a majestic confusion crossed his brow.  
“Your ravens. Loki told me all about them. I’ve always like crows. I always regretted that I was marrying into a family that has such cool … pets? But that I would never get to meet them. So can I meet your ravens?”  
“You have not married into my family,” he said, sweeping away from her towards the door.  
“Hey,” Nora lifted her skirts and ran after him, lightheadedness forgotten, “is that some kind of adoption crack, because if it-”  
He froze and Nora barely stopped herself from bouncing off of his back, “No. Loki is my child. But you are not his wife.”  
He walked out, Nora at his heels. She had practice keeping up with tall men and managed to catch up so she was next to him as he stalked grandly down the wide, silvery stone hallway. “The hell you say.”  
“Members of the royal family must be granted permission by the AllFather in order to marry.”  
Nora laughed, “Yeah, I can imagine how many times Loki has asked permission for anything.”  
His head whipped around to stare at her, but he kept walking, “That does not change anything, impudent girl.”  
“Impudent girl! I’m nearly fifty, I haven’t felt like a girl in quite a while. Still, I guess that’s better than being compared to a goat. Probably the only time I’m going to rate higher than Jane Foster. So, tell me, what does it say to you about your parenting skills that your children are only willing to introduce their significant others to you when it is the only alternative to their deaths?”  
As they sped rather more quickly than seemed like mere walking could account for down the hallways and through several massive chambers, it occurred to Nora that she was on Asgard and she wasn’t paying attention. She also regularly caught scandalized and horrified expressions on the faces of the tall and beautiful citizens of the palace.  
And her feet were freezing.  
She figured it was a crapshoot as to if the looks were more related to her sassing Odin or because she was Loki’s … whatever they considered her to be here. She had a feeling that the terms would probably not be complementary.  
As desperate as she was to ask him about Loki - where he was, what was his sanity level, was he hurt - Nora couldn’t make herself say the words. She refused to let him see how frightened she was.  
Eventually Odin stopped before a pair of elaborately carved wooden doors at the end of a hallway flanked by a pair of guards wearing helmets that made them look vaguely like beetles. He gave her a frown that didn’t look unfriendly, “You are very disrespectful, if you do consider me to be your father-in-law.”  
“Because I don’t like you.”  
One of the guards gasped and the other put his hand to his mouth like a nun accidently walking into a gentlemen’s club.  
Nora continued, “I mean, I appreciate that you saved Loki when he was a baby. Thank you for that. I have a feeling he never thanked you for it, and why would he, considering that you were nothing but a dick about him afterwards? But again, thank you for saving him. For making him … possible. For giving him a loving mother and brother, for teaching him to be an arrogant, privileged ass sometimes, because frankly I adore that about him, even though I’d die before letting him know it. But fuck you for the rest of it.”  
Both guards tensed, and one of them took a step towards her.  
Odin waved him off.  
“Do you have anything further to say, Ms. Walsh? Feeling proud baiting the bear in his own cave? Knowing that I would not bother to retaliate against someone so beneath me, that you can speak so to someone so much your elder and better?”  
Nora crossed her arms, “At least I know where he got all of that ‘ant / boot’ bullshit from.”  
He nodded towards the doors that swung open, “I doubt we will be meeting again. Despite your poor manners I wish you well. No matter your thoughts, I do care for Loki and you are…”  
Whatever he planned to say to her, he didn’t finish. It might have come too close to approbation for his comfort, so rather he gestured for her to enter the doors and left her there, walking ponderously away.  
“I still want to meet those ravens,” she called after him. “Dad.”  
There was a barely perceivable flinch of his broad shoulders.  
The guards - einherjar, she remembered - were staring off into the middle distance, neither moving or speaking.  
“So am I supposed to go in there, then?” Nora asked. “What is it?”  
They didn’t move.  
Neither did she.  
She might not have been able to beat Odin at this game, but she had been with Loki for nearly two decades, so she had learned something about staring people down. They both folded like cheap armor in a few minutes.  
“They are Prince Loki’s chambers, Prin- Madame?” one of them said, while the other looked nervously into the room, after the AllFather, towards the ceiling, everywhere but at Nora.  
“Ok, then,” she started to walk past them when the more nervous one cleared his throat.  
“Um … thank you …” he said in a small voice.  
Nora cocked her head at him. “For what?”  
“For, um, well Prince Loki … I was in his cohort, like, when we went to war time and again. He wasn’t nice, but he always brought us home. Maybe just ‘cause he hated to lose, or something. When he came back after Midgard, after the second time, I mean, he was different. He even asked what my name was.”  
“Oh. What is your name?”  
“Gunvar.”  
“Nice to meet you. And you?”  
“Alk, um, Mistress?”  
“Stick with Nora, it’s easier,” she said, patting the first guard on the shoulder as she went by, hoping that Loki had some extra warm socks still in his rooms.  
The hallway was long and made of the same cold but slightly glowing stone as the rest of the palace, with rooms off of it. One was a vast, empty space with an empty dias and a massive balcony. What looked like a throne was near those open windows, a book open on the seat, a bottle of wine and a golden goblet on the floor beside it.  
She recognised the book. It was one she had given to Loki for their first Christmas together, it’s jacket was sun-faded and covered in dust, as if it had been lying there since his last residence on Asgard.  
There were several other rooms - one that looked like a dance studio, with mirrored walls. And rack after rack of weapons. Another that was either a lab or an elaborate pastry kitchen with a wood burning stove. Storage. A bathing room with a sunken tub large enough for a very comfortable orgy.  
His bedroom was very similar to his room in the hunting lodge in Longyearbyen and the original design of the master bedroom in the 999. Except bigger. Especially the bed. The bed was borderline hilarious. There was also a door leading to what had to be his workroom. This one was mostly empty, Loki having no doubt snuck back many times over the years to gather his things, but the air still felt wrong, still smelled of fenugreek and motor oil, and Nora still didn’t like it.  
All of the rooms were austere and grand, and terribly cold.  
What wasn’t anywhere in them was Loki.  
Finally, at the end of the hall she found a small room, at least small by comparison, with a cozy fire and several small, velvet-y divans, the thick, warm layers of rugs Nora knew Loki liked to have underfoot, and shelves and shelves of books.  
And Thor, who was sitting near the fire, his hands folded, looking stiff with unhappiness.  
“Hey, big guy,” she said.  
Her brother-in-law looked up, his eyes terrible looking, and his shoulders dropped. In two quick motions he was up and had stepped to her, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her in a very careful hug, “Thank the Norns for your life, sister. When Heimdall saw what had happened he opened the Bifrost and sent aid immediately, but you had lost so much blood...”  
He buried his head in her hair and sobbed a bit.  
It all came back to her like a hallucination.

_The blade was made of something that shone like a sapphire until the gush of her blood down it’s length turned it a lurid purple._   
_The blade was so sharp it didn’t hurt, until the Dökkálfr warrior holding it twisted it inside of her body and then she screamed. Loki’s voice roared down the mountain path, annihilating her murderer with words and a thousand tiny blades so all was left was mist and the pain that he had caused._   
_Loki’s hands were everywhere on her, trying to hold her together, when the world exploded under them and Nora felt herself rushing through the air._   
_Alone._

Nora pushed at Thor until he put her down, “Thor?”  
He refused to meet her eye.  
“Thor? Where’s Loki?”

The chair was uncomfortable, the metal straps holding his wrists, neck, and ankles but he had vague memories of having experienced much worse. And none of them were as bad as his head, which throbbed.  
The tall, skinny man glittered with golden robes and the energy of an overstimulated child.  
“What have we here?”  
Was he the one being spoken to? Even if he was not, his desire, his need, to speak was too great for him to resist.  
“I am-”  
When he tried to recall there was something other than pain. Something that made him wish it was merely pain. An all over feeling of wrongness, like his skin being rubbed with electricity, like metal between his teeth and a battery touching his tongue.  
The cold of his flesh surged, causing a delicate lattice of frost to form on the huge windows behind the tall man, and the metal holding him in place to groan.  
He stopped trying to remember, and anyway there was a woman speaking, “A Jotunn...” she said, clearly astonished.  
His reflection was easier to see in those windows, now that they were frosted with white. At least his eyes, that glowed like blood in his cyanotic face. Tall horns scrolled above him, rampant and tapering to murderous points.  
He sneered at the stranger he saw and the stranger sneered back.  
He pulled at the metal holding him, which gave with a shriek and a crack, when a jolt of agonizing pain starting from his throat and taking the rest of him sent him back under, as he heard another woman say, “A contender.”


	2. Ladies and Gentlemen, This is What You’ve Come For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora and Thor take a vacation, attend a sporting event, and go to a party.

Nora pushed at Thor until he put her down, “Thor?”  
He refused to meet her eye.  
“Thor? Where’s Loki?”

Forty days later -

The Grandmaster was attractive enough if you liked tall, slender, power-hungry, narcissistic peacocks who can’t shut up.  
In another life Nora could have been crazy about him.  
If he hadn’t been a slave owner.   
And didn’t wear sandals.  
As it was, she was finding it hard to flirt with him as he escorted her to a seat at the front of the owner’s box in his arena.   
“I was just saying to Topaz that you may be the first princess we have ever had the honor of hosting at our little … games… “  
He trailed off as if expecting her to say something. She gave him a little smile and lightly touched the boney wrist bone of the hand that her hand was gently resting on, “That is clearly their loss. This is… charming?” She faltered, looking at the massive, candy-colored colosseum. It looked like someone had raided the set of every terrible European science fiction film of the 60s and 70s and welded them together to create this very secure monstrosity.  
The owner’s box looked like it should have shag carpeting and a hot tub.   
“It is charming, isn’t it?” he said, clearly proud. “Perhaps afterwards I can give you a tour of the rest of the facility? Some of our guests like see the training rooms. Getting to see my wonderful warriors up close can be very … stimulating…”  
A low, growling noise came from behind them.  
The Grandmaster looked over his shoulder, “Your bodyguard would be a nice addition to my… “ he made a fluttering gesture with his long fingers, “club … if you are interesting in selling him I would -”  
Before Thor could reach up and twist the Grandmaster’s head off of his shoulders, Nora gave a laugh, hoping it didn’t sound as forced as it felt. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly. He’s been in the family for so long. Now Sif on the other hand…”  
She down to see the Goddess of Battles on a lower tier, searching. In different parts of the arena Nora also spotted Vostagg, Hogun, and Fandral, also looking. And she knew Charles was relentlessly circling and scanning the ground floor.  
The Grandmaster leaned over and whispered in her ear, his breath smelling of anise seeds, “Oh I couldn’t. I refuse to have a sla-, an unpaid employee who Topaz finds frightening.”   
They shared a laugh and Nora let him seat her on the far end of a massive couch overlooking the arena floor, taking a pale purple cocktail from a masked waitress. It was disgusting, like almost everything else in this place, but she made an appreciative noise anyway, trying to not look to obvious as she gazed hungrily at the crowd.  
Nothing.  
“Excuse me, my dear … highness, yes, my dear highness, I have some pre-event business to attend to,” again he made that airy gesture. “You know how it is. Anything you should desire, anything at all, you need only ask and I’ll be back quick as a bunny,” he kissed her hand rather wetly and was gone in a cloud of gold lamé.  
“Please tell me he did not lick you just then.” Thor stood behind her, arms crossed, and she could feel him glowering.  
“I’m not the liar in my marriage, so yes, he licked me, and also, I like your new hair. It makes you look like an adult. Anything?” She sipped.  
“No.” He sounded as unhappy about that as he did about the Grandmaster tongue. And his haircut, but they had thought it would work as a kind of disguise, which it turned out they hadn’t needed, since apparently no one on Sakaar had heard of Asgard, so far were they outside of the Nine Realms.  
“Goddamn it!”  
The last forty days (and nearly plus one) had been torture for Nora. When Loki and she had been betrayed on Cerferrun they had had nowhere to run but the unstable part of the system where it was about to fall into it’s sun, hoping they could hide there long enough for Loki to create a door. They had been in the crumbling mountains, when the last Dark Elf patrol found them. And killed her.  
Or near enough.   
Loki’s frenzied burst of magic had accelerated the decay, and when Thor had ordered Heimdall to send the Bifrost to recover them at the same moment it had knocked the two of them apart, gathering Nora up and sending Loki spinning into the void.  
In the chaos of Thor racing her to the healers, and trying and failing to argue Odin into giving her one of Idunn’s apples, but convincing him that it was in everyone’s best interest to save her life - which he swore had not taking much effort - Heimdall had lost sight of Loki.   
For the endless days the healers had worked on Nora (on finding that in addition to a gigantic stab wound she had several other minor ailments and injuries that they found distressing they insisted on repairing them as well, not understanding that they were just normal aging for a Midgardian) Thor had stood beside the sentinel and begged him to search but he could not find him.   
He had seen him fall through a doorway in space that had dragged him through the void to a world on the edge of the universe. And then nothing.  
“He’s … Heimdall saw him fall. He did not see him land, which means-”  
Nora snorted in her brother-in-law’s face, “Nothing. If you tell me he’s dead I am going to start thinking you’re as dumb as Loki says you are. Where is this planet? We’re going.”  
It had taken them some time to find Charles and Loki’s ship, and even longer to pinpoint the planet that Loki had been seen falling into, as well as gathering enough intelligence on it to frighten her.   
While sitting on the ship waiting, sleepless and poisoned with misery, for enough information on how to get to the end of known reality, Nora had tried to think about what Loki would do if their situation was reversed. If he was sane enough at the time to scheme she knew he wouldn’t just land on Sakaar and start shouting her name. He would find out who was who one the planet, what they wanted, what they needed, what they loved and hated and feared and desired and plan accordingly.  
When it came to who was who, it was simple. There was only one who. The Grandmaster. What he wanted was to be entertained, what he needed was novelty, what he loved was his arena, what he hated was… Actually he didn’t seem to have any hates, just a few irritations … and what he desired was anything new and shiny.  
Nora had looked at herself in the mirror and assessed. She had never been especially shiny, and the decades had left her even less so. Although the healers on Asgard had left her with much nicer and firmer everything than she had had in awhile, and Loki’s hair care knowledge meant her locks always glowed. Even if now there was nearly as much steel and silver in it as brown. Walsh’s always greyed early  
She reached into her dresser drawer and pulled out the tiara that Loki had given her, a glowing tangle of copper, emeralds, and amber, and put it on, the glamour attached to it making her look like her best possible self.   
Outside, Thor, Sif, and the others were preparing the ship for what everyone agreed was going to be a dangerous and rocky journey through something with a name that Thor refused to tell her. Nora watched them, thinking about the gaudy guards uniforms that they still probably had somewhere from that caper on Paushing about ten years ago, since Loki refused to throw out anything.   
And so a coronet, five temporary guards, a snotty manservant, the wardrobe of gowns that had accumulated and gone unworn, a haughty lift to her chin, and a sneer appropriated from her husband, had led her straight to the Grandmaster’s palace, past his actual guards, and now here, where she was certain Loki had to be.  
While she searched she tried not to think the one question she had spent the last weeks trying not to think.   
Why wouldn’t he have found her?

“Slœgt?” The other gladiator - he never bothered to learn their names - was clearly frightened to speak to him. “I was sent-”  
He stood, stretching, “I know. I am the next monkey to dance.”

The fighting had been going on for some time. The arena was an all day event, with new fighters going on in the morning, to smaller crowds blearily eating what passed for breakfast amongst the poor, hoping to live and find a place on the better bill later in the day. The afternoon was novelty fights - a bat/dragon hybrid versus a lava golem, two not quite grown floral colossi taking on a giant amoeba with rage issues and an axe, etc. Finally, at night the real battles started.  
So Nora saw gushing rainbows of blood, limbs flying in the air, and heard noises that would be nightmare fodder for anyone who had not spent the last two decades roistering through space with Loki and their revolving list of guest stars.   
Even so, she was glad she had skipped lunch, especially since The Grandmaster’s chef was a Kt’kn, so primarily knew recipes for creatures who secreted their digestive fluids.   
The last fight of the day was about to happen, the Grandmaster’s beloved champion against one of the Brood.   
Thor had given up standing behind her and was now lounging on the couch at her side. “What I cannot understand is how they have induced one of the Brood to fight for them. They follow commands of their Empress and Brood queens alone. Indeed, their warriors are little more than extensions of their queen’s wills.”  
A gigantic hologram of the Grandmaster appeared towering over the arena, nearly as fidgety and unstable as he was in the flesh.  
“Sakaarians! And Noble Guests! Now, the main event! First, our challenger, coming to us all the way from Brood Homeworld, he’s - I mean SHE’S big, she’s bad, she’s got a hornet’s sting and a temper to match, meet - and I believe I’m pronouncing this correctly, Tkkkkk...kkkkkt...kkkktkkkkk, I think? Of the Swarm!”  
One of the huge metal gates on that the gladiators came from opened and from it flew the Brood, her big insectile body hovering easily on surprisingly delicate wings. Her exoskeleton was flexible enough to allow her to coil and spin effortlessly in the air, brandishing a spear and whipping about a scorpion-like tail.  
The Grandmaster’s hologram gave a polite golf clap, “Yes, very fearsome. This is going to be a fight to remember, because now, the moment you have been waiting for, your and my- especially my- beloved champion, Slœgt of Jotunheim!”  
Thor sat forward, frowning, “That cannot be.”  
The crowd went wild. It was like Michael Jordan stepping onto the court at the Madhouse on Madison in 1993, Nora thought, dating herself mentally. The second massive gate opened, and the crowd grew even louder as tall, graceful figure stood framed briefly in the entrance, letting the frenzy grow.   
When he finally emerged, he raised the two swords he carried to salute the slavish mob, holding the blades so they mimicked the placement of his elegant black horns.   
Nora hadn’t felt herself stand and walk to the edge of the box so she pressed against it, trying to get closer to the hologram that turned slowly, taking in the adulation.   
“Why does he had horns?” she said in a low whisper, her voice stolen by shock.   
“Jotunn royalty have horns, but it is their custom that if they should be defeated in war they are saw off and presented to the victory. My father went a step further and suppressed the gene in the family that creates the horns. Somehow Loki must have found a way around the binding.”  
“Doesn’t he look taller?” Nora clutched her arms, freezing and a bit shocky.  
“You should sit down,” Thor tried to lead her back.  
“Doesn’t he?” It came out as a bit of a shriek.  
“Yes, quite a bit taller.”  
“Now, now, what is this?” The Grandmaster had joined them. “Ah, my champion! He is impressive, isn’t he? So graceful, so merciless, so … potent! It is my custom to have a little soiree in his honor after every fight, you must come. All of the worst people will be there.”  
“What if he loses?” Thor asked as Nora stared at the fight.  
The Brood fighter lashed out with her tail, striking at Loki’s head. Rather than dodge or flip out of the way, as would be typical of his usual style, or slicing it off with one of the swords, instead he tossed one of his weapons aside and grasped the stinger, ice quickly radiating from his hand up the tail.   
With a hard jerk he whipped the creature up quickly and then down with a crack that left it dazed, it’s long body at an angle where before it had been curve.  
He began to reel it in.   
Nora turned away.  
The Grandmaster gave a very pleasant smile, “He never loses. He is … uniquely vicious.”  
There was a terrible sound. It was the sound of a boy tearing the wings off of a fly, magnified by a thousand times.  
The mob practically swooned.

The party was in full swing by the time Nora and Thor arrived, teetering on that tipping point where it was about to turn into an orgy minus the grapes. The Grandmaster greeted them with a huge swooping gesture, pleased to show her off to the party and the party off to her. After he made it clear that as his very most special guest, and a princess, she would not be required or even expected to engage in any of the activities.  
Although he clearly had his hopes.  
Fortunately a Grandmaster’s work was never done and Topaz popped up at his shoulder to whisper something urgently in his ear while giving Nora a contemptuous once over. Once that sort of thing would have made her come up with something snappy and insulting but Nora was past caring about things like that.  
“Until later, my dear. But, if you should … need me for … anything … all you need to do is sing out,” he made a bird like motion with his hands, “and I will fly to your side.” And with another lick to her knuckles he was gone.  
Distracted and still a bit dazed, Nora wiped the back of her hand on Thor’s cloak and snagged another one of those purple drinks and took the whole sweet, foul thing down like a shot and grabbed another. “Perhaps this is not the best time to be … befuddled, sister.”  
“Wrong,” she said, finishing the second one while taking something brown and chilled from a different tray. “I can honestly say there has never been a better time in my life to be drunk.”  
There was what might be a band playing in one room and a buffet of unrecognisable food in another. Dancers, some of them performers and other guests, writhed on every vertical surface including the ceiling, and on each other. Something orange with a mildly aphrodisiac quality was being pumped through the air, which kept the smells of bodies, sex, and lube from becoming unpleasant, and the Grandmaster periodically appeared as a hologram to exhort his guests to indulge themselves in every way.  
Fandral and Volstagg were here somewhere, Nora having decided that Sif and Hogun’s buzzkilling powers would probably antagonise the Grandmaster, and that Charles would be better off trying to talk to some of the behind the scenes types to find out when the current ‘champion’ had arrived and what his story was.  
Four drinks later Thor froze, staring at something over Nora’s shoulder. “Do not turn around.” His face was grim, his eyes filled with heartbreak.  
She finished the brown stuff - it tasted like whiskey and bongwater - and took a glass of wine from another tray.  
It tasted like wine.  
“He’s behind me, isn’t he.”  
“I - no!”  
Nora turned, she couldn’t help herself. She had to see him. Closer than in the arena. She had to see.  
Loki, or maybe she should make herself think Slœgt, was slouching on a divan, his legs in his usual aggressive spread, taking up even more space than he normally would. He had to be at least eight feet tall, and while still lean and lithe, his build was proportionately larger as well.  
A beautiful young male with the luminous skin of a grey pearl and bat-like, iridescent wings was perched next to him like a gently alighted butterfly. Loki’s fingers were snagged in the grey boy’s silvery hair, holding him in a long, deep kiss. On his other side one of the female gladiators, one who had fought using a trident and net, was riding on his fingers, moaning silently and clawing at the cushions.  
Between his legs, a Kree female, her own blue skin darker than Loki’s, knelt down in one graceful gesture, grinding her palms along the bulge in his suede pants, speaking softly trying to get his attention.  
With a laugh, he pushed the boy’s mouth away and started to answer the Kree when he looked up, meeting Nora’s stare.  
He smiled very slowly, and motioned slowly with his now free hand towards his lap, tilting his head questioningly.   
He had no idea who she was and from her husband’s brilliant crimson eyes a stranger looked at her.  
“I have to get out of this party,” Nora said, shoving her glass into Thor’s hands, turning, and running as quickly as the crowd and her long gown would allow.

The hallway was quiet. The key to a successful party was all in the soundproofing.  
Nora ran around several corners and finally found herself leaning on a wall that was cool under her palms. Her head rang and was filled with bile and broken pencils and a terrible echoing distortion. Something was pulling at all of the muscles in her body at once.   
This was ok. These things happened. There had been that time she hadn’t know who he was. And then there was the time with the wrong Loki. And the time with the clones that he had made in his sleep. And the first time she had been kidnapped. And the first time he had been kidnapped. The time she had nearly died of the Weeping Plague.   
She just needed to get that image, the sight of his eyes closed in bliss as he kissed someone else, as he touched someone else, out of her head and then she could think.  
She couldn’t think and it wouldn’t go away.  
She leaned her head against the wall. It felt good.   
“My, isn’t this a pretty piece?” said a soft voice, darker and rougher than it should have been, carnal and frightening and painfully close to belovedly familiar.  
Claws gently scraped along the back of her neck and long, cold fingers wrapped under the back of the torc Loki had always insisted on her wearing for protection, pulling firmly so her chin went up and she had to stand upright to keep from being hurt.  
Slœgt’s horned shadow engulfed hers as he leaned down to purr in her ear, “So, princess, who do you belong to? And do they share?”


	3. Slave Is Such a Harsh Word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora meets someone who wants to be her friend, but she thinks she has enough friends already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I noticed that I had accidentally used the warning for Major Character Death. That was a mistake and has been fixed. Sorry!

 

Slœgt had never pursued an uninterested partner before.

That he could remember.  

As his memories only stretched back a year it was possible that he had.  But since he had been on Sakaar, since he had taken his first victory in the Grandmaster’s arena, no one had been uninterested.  From the servants, to his fellow gladiators, to the cheering throngs, to - a few times - the Grandmaster himself every one that he had wanted, wanted him right back.

In fact, most those he didn’t want, wanted him anyway.  And sometimes he let them have him.

Until tonight.

The Grandmaster had been going on and on about some special visitor.  A princess from some weird, far-away place called … the Midlands? The Midwest?  Middlesex? Mid-something, at any rate. He had seen her sitting with him during the fight, but had not gotten a good look at her or cared to especially.  The new Kree female he had seen at the last party held in his honor had given him a challenging look and he was determined to see if her species were as physically tough as they were reputed to be.  

The Kree had finally decided to stop playing coy and join him where he was playing with Afoni and that pretty boy with the wings whose name was a series of scents released from his skin.  He had looked up from the nicely kneeling female, about to give her some necessary instruction when he saw another female staring at him. 

Not that there was anything unusual about that.

She was taller than most of the pale skinned creatures on Sakaar, but her bulky bodyguard towered over her.  Her rather thin form was mostly hidden by the long, black … whatever it was that she was wearing, other than her long neck and arms.  Her hair was short and dark, shot through with silver and steel, and when he met her eyes she started to tremble, her hands shaking hard enough to stir the drink she held in one while the other clawed at her skirts.

There was nothing unusual about her.  Or especially attractive.

Typical, smooth features and skin, marred by deep, dark circles beneath her eyes that he sensed were not normal markings for her species.  Her mouth was tense and drawn small, turned down and uninviting. She had obviously been drinking too much, and her dark eyes were cold and unhappy.

Skinny, pale, plain, nervous, tired, drunk, and miserable.  

Slœgt wanted to carry her - over his shoulder, in his arms, he didn’t care how - from this place to his bed.  He wanted to use his mouth on every delicate part of her until she shuddered from arousal rather than agitation.  Until she was so overcome with need that she could barely move, her limbs heavy and drugged by lust so she could only lay there, moaning and begging while he made her come again and again, until the misery flooded out of her, until she fell into a perfect, exhausted sleep.  

He wanted to take the place of her pitiful guards, and stand at her door so no one would disturb her while she slept.  When she woke he would feed her by hand.

Then he would take her again.  This time more roughly, but the result would be the same. 

Or, because at the same time he was drawn to her he was also repulsed and filled with dread, the sight of her face pushing at the part of his mind that he kept dark and hidden for fear of the pain in it, he wanted to run at the sight of her.

Instead, when he gave her the opportunity to decide for him, she was the one who ran.  

The sight of her fleeing him was infuriating.  Insulting. Wrong. Even that place in his thoughts where he didn’t go, that dreaded her, seemed to pulse in anger at the idea that she thought she could escape him.  He followed her, through the writhing and noisy crowd into the quiet of the halls. She seemed to have no destination in mind, only to get away.

When he caught up with her she was in one of the small, dark service corridors, leaning her arms and head on the wall, her body shaking even harder, her breath jagged like a warrior who had taken a lethal blow and could no longer lift their blade.

He noticed, then, the torc she wore.  It was large, twisted brass and intricate runes and sigils covering it.  It was too large for her. Clearly it had been meant for a man, and while he couldn’t do magic, Slœgt was, like most of his kind or so he had been told, sensitive to seidr and he could feel it coming off of it.  He both admired the way it glowed against her skin, beautiful and … protective, even though that made no sense, and he hated the possessiveness it implied.

He wanted to touch it, to see if it was warm from touching her.  To see if the metal would feel molten to him and if he would burn.  He wanted to be the one that had put it on her. 

It did burn, through to his bones.  So did the touch of her skin on his knuckles.  He craved more.

His horned shadow engulfed hers as he leaned down to purr in her ear, “So, princess, who do you belong to? And do they share?”

She turned quickly, within the torc, so he still held it but they were face to face.  He tightened his grip on the brass which made a faint groaning sound. For a second her eyes stared into his searching and sick.  Then she gathered herself and gave him a half sneer, her head cocking a bit even though his hold was keeping her stance proud.

“I belong to no one but myself.  And no, I don’t share. The torc, however, is a … loan of sorts from my husband.  And that better not be the hand you had up that woman’s … ness.”

He rubbed his thumb slowly along the twisted coil, “It isn’t.  This has magic. To keep you from escaping?” This close he could see faint lines near her eyes, around her mouth.  They were too fine for caste marks, but were similar to the ones on the Grandmaster’s face. Once in bed he had told Slœgt that they were a sign of ages amongst his people, and that he was millions of years old, so clearly the princess had to be close to half a million herself.  

He loved experienced women.

“To keep me safe.  Midgardians are fragile by the standards of the company he and I keep.  If I were not wearing it your … overly familiar gesture,” she said as she reached up and took his hand between two of her fingers as if it were distasteful and he allowed her to move it away from her jewelry, “would freeze my flesh black, bore through my skin, and turn my heart to ice.”

Ah.  

His cock had gone from vaguely interested in the proceedings, but cautious due to the persistent foreboding in his head, to wanting to participate.  Over and over again.

“And these?”  He reached out a finger to now stroke one of the dozen beaded necklaces that hung to her waist.  

She took a step away from him, her back hitting the wall, her eyes furious, “Do not touch those!”

He found it strange that his grip on something as intimate as her collar didn’t seem to bother her, but that just a brush on one single bead amongst what had to hundreds offended her to her core.  He lifted his hands placatingly and then leaned them on the wall so he had her caged. “I am sorry, little girl. I didn’t mean to soil your pretty sparklies.”

Her glare made cold surge through his veins, delicious and insistent, wanting her enough to ignore the warning in his head.  The sense that this brittle creature could destroy him.

“I would offer a proper apology to her highness, were I you,” came a deep voice from behind him.

The golden-haired bodyguard.  

“It’s alright, Thor.  We were just chatting about jewelry.  You know how much I love talking about clothes, and shoes, and all of that kind of thing,” Slœgt had turned to face the guard, and Nora stepped neatly around him, taking the one called Thor’s arm.

The sight of her luminous, pale fingers resting on the other man’s hairy arm made a low, growling noise come unbidden to his throat.

The guard raised an eyebrow and gave him an insolent smile, “Yes, Nora,” the man sensually drawled out what had to be the princess’s personal name, “how you love frippery,” and then put a finger under her chin to tip her face up, and kissed her.

The place in Slœgt’s mind that he feared went crazy, lashing out with pain and rage, and he left them there, returning to the party, hoping to distract himself with that Kree girl before he did something that would get him a firm electrocution from the Grandmaster and leave the hallways painted in blood.

 

Nora had never considered what it would be like to kiss one of her actual brothers, but she had to imagine that it would only be slightly more nauseating and weird than kissing Thor.  Well, being kissed by Thor since she was not really participating.

When Loki, or whatever he was calling himself these days was gone, she bit the hell out of him, knowing it was the only thing she could do to get away.  “What the fuck was that, you blonde psycho!” she screamed, wiping Thor’s blood from her mouth.

Thor touched his lip, “OW! I thought that the shock might draw my brother forth from within the Jotunn, but clearly not.”

She shook a finger in his face, “That makes perfect sense!  Never do that again! It was utterly-”

“Sick making?” he offered, not looking well himself.

“Yeah.  Let’s get back to the party.  I need to keep an eye on him. He was using contractions…”

Thor gave her a confused look, but escorted her back.

 

The orgy part of the event was in full effect when they returned to the party room, and it was easy to find NotLoki, now seated in a throne-like chair, the Kree female back between his thighs having just pulled his cock from his pants.

Nora didn’t even pretend not to stare.  There was her husband’s penis, identical in every way to how it was when he was his normal size.  But where was it was enormous when he was himself, in this form it was merely impressively large. And beautiful as ever.

“Wha- what are you-” Thor said, gagging and looking away.

“Sorry.  It’s just you know how sometimes you see something in context and all of a sudden it makes sense.  Get me a drink. Get me a tray of them.”

 

Slœgt found the Kree and resumed their interaction.  The normally proud warrior was eager to get on her knees.

Everyone loved a winner.  And the Kree adored those who could and would kill without compunction.

She had an impressive grip and suck, her mouth was hot and clever, her hands eager and she was practically vibrating with arousal, humping her hips slightly as she sucked.  He looked at her gleaming, midnight-coloured skin and perfect, mighty form, with silver painted nipples and thickly muscled thighs.

He was bored.  Only pure suction was keeping him hard.

The princess and her guard?  Lover? Who was he to her? The image of that nauseating kiss rolled over and over in his head and the most talented mouth in the universe couldn’t have kept him hard then.  He sighed and leaned over the Kree, “Sorry, you just aren’t that good at this. Go play with someone else. Karl has low standards.”

She started to rise, warrior-rage in her eyes when he fisted the hair on the top her head, pulling her up to his face, his cock moderately interested in the texture of her skin as she slid up him, but only moderately.  “I would not do that if I were you, pet. Besides, I might be generous enough to give you another chance to please me later.” She dropped her eyes and scuttled off, clearly even more aroused than before.

Slœgt saw they had an audience.  That damned princess again. Nora.

Nora.

Nora.  The name practically purred.

His brain throbbed as he rolled the name around in his head, playing with it like a sore tooth.  Her guard brought her two drinks, and she finished them quickly, sending him off for more as she turned away from Slœgt with a sad, angry shake  of her head.

He tucked his now again rampant cock away and went to her, all dread to the contrary.  He felt as if being close to her would be like laying down in a fire. It was the same compulsion that made people want to jump from the tops of buildings.

That thought ached as well.

“So you’re a princess, then?  Princess of what?” he asked her back.

She turned and stared at him.  Deep into and at him, as if he could answer.

He couldn’t.  He saw that her mouth looked slightly swollen from being roughly kissed and there was dried blood on the back of one of her hands.

Her head drooped for a moment and then she glared at him, and finished her drink, tossing the glass casually over her shoulder, disgusted.  But for what reason he couldn’t begin to fathom.

The glass hit the edge of a pink and orange titanium punchbowl and shattered spectacularly on a metal rosette, spraying everyone behind her with sticky glass fragments.

“What am I the princess of?” she asked, turning with a drunken, boneless grace, gesturing to the now attentive partygoers.  She stopped for a moment, waited and sighed when no one came to her aid and said, picking up speed as she went, “Let me tell you.  I am not just a princess, you intergalactic trash. I am … I am…” she seemed to gather some kind of wind and started, pacing back and forth, now and then pointing randomly at some in the mass of revelers, growing fiercer and faster as she went.

“I am the Countess of Basie.  I am the Duchess of both Ellington and Earl.  I am Queen of Sheba, Hearts, Spades, the North Sea, the South Wind, and the Western Horizon. I am Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, but not either of those bitches from Frozen.  Fuck those two. I am the Wicked Witch of Cook County. I am the Fairy Godmother of the South Shore. I am the Goddess of Perseverance and Devotion. I am the one who whispers in your ear when you are having a nightmare that it is ok to sleep.  I am the friend of all dogs, and kitties, and, fuck it, anything furry and cuddly, and snakes, too. I am a Guardian of the Galaxy, a frienamie of the Avengers - past, present, future, and especially Captain America. I am a sister to Thunder, the cousin of the Storm of War and her mate, Murder, and the niece of Music, and I am married to the Prince of Darkness and the God of Stories, and I need another drink!  So someone get me a round or when my husband comes home he’ll make you all sorry you were ever born!”

Hands were immediately raised, offering her cocktails, straight liquor, flagons of ale, flasks of mead, coupes of champagne, and goblets of wine, as well as an enormous variety of things to snort, smoke, inject, ingest, and rub into her skin.  

She went for the flagon, leaving the rest of the now excited sycophants dejected.

Slœgt took the cup before it reached her lips.  “I think you’ve had enough.”

“And I think you…  You specifically, don’t have any say over me,” she said calmly.

Famous for his icy rage in the arena, he was now on fire with more anger than he had ever felt.  “If you are so fragile you need this-” he flicked at the torc, “to protect you then you have clearly had enough to drink to poison your delicate little system.  I would think someone your age would be wise enough to know that. Nora.”

She flinched when he said her name and opened her mouth, when the Grandmaster found them, clapping his hands in pleasure.

“My two favorite people!  Together! How … wonderful!”  He put an arm around the princess’s shoulders and Slœgt’s waist.  “Please don’t tell me I missed any erotic shenanigans between you two.  It would utterly ruin my night.”

“No.  We have been a shenanigan-free zone.  No canoodling, either, so don’t worry.  I’m exhausted, and my hear-, my head hurts, so I will be saying good night,” The princess Nora said, ducking from under the Grandmaster’s arm, and motioning for her guard.

“I am so disappointed.  I had hoped we might find a noisy corner for a tete-a-tete.” 

Slœgt forced down a growl.  He might have been the Grandmaster’s most beloved possession, but that wouldn’t keep him from having his nerves fried if En Dwi Gast thought he was going to get in the way of him having a taste of regal cunt.

Wonderful.  Now he was making  _ himself _ want to growl.

“I’m not really into tete, let alone tete-a-tete,” she said, letting that Thor creature drape a velvet cape about her.  She looked more tired, the brief energy she had shown burned out.

The host drooped, but then quickly returned to his usual manic energy, “But tomorrow I insist on you breakfasting with me and then coming to the training ground.  I am sure you will find it very stimulating…” he kissed her limp hand, “sleep well, sweet princess.”

“Yeah, I won’t,” she sighed, letting the grabby guard lead her away.  Then she stopped, and turned around, a glint of something in her eye, “Would it be alright if my guards took some exercise with your … unpaid staff?”  She hit Thor in the stomach with the back of her hand, “Wouldn’t want them to get flabby.”

“Of course!  But not the death, needless to say!  That’s only for show time.”

“Thank you, Grandmaster,” she offered him her hand again, smiling, and when he bowed to give her another sloppy kiss she stared into Slœgt’s eyes, her gaze suddenly bright, and his own blood burned him like lava.

  
  
  



	4. What Were You the God of, Again?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor and Loki go to the gym.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With some apologies to Sir Terry Pratchett

Slœgt woke, pushed the Kree female - Kela - and the pretty, winged boy whose name was the scents of raisins followed by sand and then something acrid, from his bed and then from the room as a whole, and let himself drop naked to the floor to begin stretching.  

Because he had quickly grown bored with the other two groping fruitlessly at him and had told them to play with each other quietly while he slept, his night had been full of the same dream that always came when he had not fucked or fought himself into oblivion.

The woman was dead.  Her body was pierced through by the dark elf blade and she was a heap of graceful bones and cooling flesh, her hair - sometimes long and coloured like antique gold, other times short and shaded with walnut and coffee - rank with her life’s blood.  

He killed the elf, wrenching its head to the side by it’s bone hair, cutting its head free.

He killed another.  

He killed them all.

He killed until they were a wall between him and the woman, so he would not have to see her.  

Shaking, trying to stop himself, he pushed the wall over and crawled over the dead to her and took her up, turning her head so he could see her face one last time, but when he woke, every time with his chest heaving, choking back a scream, what he refused to recall when he woke were her eyes that he knew would be glazed with death, speckled with dirt, and accusing him. Knowing his guilt

He put it behind him, putting it in the place in his head where the pain hid, and focused on his body, which was less treacherous than his mind.  He pushed himself into a handstand, then onto one hand and began his push-ups, his head tucked so just the tips of his horns just barely shhhhh’d across the cold stone floor.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the universe ….

On Bisphasia -

Tronc Dvar stood on stage before his troop - actors, singers, dancers, the behind the scenes types who made the beauty possible, the janitors, even the girl who lived in the alley behind the theatre and warned the performers if some of their more disturbing fans were waiting at the stage door - and felt defeated.

For the first time since he had founded his playhouse on Bisphasia, after fleeing that unfortunate business with Nova Corps all of those decades before, their theatre would be dark.  

“I am sorry, my darlings.  But our playwright, our so much beloved Kilick, has told me she is unable to complete her latest masterpiece - ‘Our Slithering Daughters’.  Indeed, she says she is not merely blocked, but she fears that she may never write again,” he raised his arms - dramatically - to silence their questions.  “This is also true of Isato of Narn, creator of the ‘Immortal Death Comes for the Snake Priest’, Maura of the Park, who gifted the universe with the ethereal ‘Thanos and the Maiden’, even the great Voros, whose musical ‘The Celestials’ truly will play now and forever, has declared itself utterly and irrevocably blocked.

“So we will take a day to contemplate.  To assess. To meditate upon the vagaries of art and commerce.  And then we will return tomorrow, early and eager and ready to rehearse ‘Death of a Salesman’.”

He ignored the groans from the assembled company.

On Earth -

Amelia McKennet snuck into her brother Milo’s room, a bottle of scentless depilatory lotion in her hand.  He had finally gotten up the courage to ask out that cute boy that worked at the coffee shop, the cute boy she had liked first, although admittedly not that much.

But it was an excellent excuse to try out a bit of messing with him that had been on her mind ever since she had noticed how similar the lotion was to the hair junk her moron brother was using these days.

So she was determined to help him make sure his hair was perfect for his date.  

But as she stood there, a bottle in each hand, ready, she just didn’t feel it.  Suddenly the screech of outrage and the look on his face that was sure to erupt lost its appeal.

With a confused sigh, Amelia snuck back out of the room and went to watch whatever instead.

On countless worlds throughout the Nine Realms and Beyond -

Writers walked away from novels, short stories, poems, songs, sagas, operas, script treatments, plays, fables, fairy tales, epics, fanfictions, comic books, social media updates, skits, letters filled with would-be truths, notes to teachers, bosses, and lovers, novellas, daydreams, fisherman’s tales, explanations to the police for their speeding, to their doctors for why they really meant to quit drinking, to their parents for why they did or did not do that thing that they were supposed to do or not do, pick up lines, myths, prayers, texts, and every other kind of fiction.

Siblings, friends, and enemies all dropped plans for elaborate practical jokes, stopped forwarding embarrassing messages, and bringing up humiliating memories at just the right moment.  Everyone simply got back to work, house cleaning, and running errands like picking up their dry-cleaning and buying bug, or mammal, spray, depending on what planet they were on.

Lovers spoke literal truths, even though those truths weren’t the whole story.

Politicians lost followers in droves.

No one bought a new car, phone, shampoo, or pair of shoes unless they really needed it.

Bedtimes went quickly, with only a kiss to the forehead.  No picture books were read or monsters checked for.

Rap battles ended abruptly.

Comedians threw no shade, not even at themselves.

Even some composers began to… slow down.

The Universe was getting bored with itself.

On Sakaar …

Nora had slept a bit for a change.  

Enough booze would do that.  

But she kept waking up, sweating out liquor, then growing cold.  The sheets on the vast bed in the rooms that the Grandmaster had given her were soaked through, and as happened sometimes when she fell at least once, her legs tangled in them as she tried to get out of bed and go looking.

She had a nice, dark bruise on her hip and her eyes were rimmed red.  There was a whole table of elaborate cosmetics that matched the racks of gowns and stacks of shoe boxes that she had had brought from the ship to the rooms to impress everyone.  Loki had shown her how to use most of the make-up and she could fix her face but she just didn’t care today.

“Charles?”

Their perfect servant entered the room, immaculately dressed in his usual grey suit, “Mistress.  Shall I order breakfast?” There was a raise to his voice, giving the subtlest bit of encouragement.  

“Just coffee.  My stomach isn’t up for more.”

Anyone else would not have been able to see the very tiniest hint of the idea of Charles considering lifting his eyebrow at her, but Nora had known the demon for nearly twenty years and she could read him pretty well.  She answered the statement that he was not making.

“I know I need more than just coffee, and that if my stomach is bothering me coffee is probably not a good idea.  And that if I am to deal with this latest… shit I need my strength. And that yes, when Loki comes back to himself he’s going to be really, really mad at both of us if I make myself sick, so I promise to have a full lunch.  I’ll even eat something healthy, and try to take a nap. Yes, a long nap. But please, just coffee now. Thank you, Charles.”

He gave a small nod, and passed Thor on the way in.  Her brother-in-law was dressed for combat practice with a padded, naturally sleeveless jerkin and leather gloves.

“Do you own anything with sleeves?  Just curious.” She asked, not getting up.

“No.  You look most dreadful, Nora.  I am concerned that you must-”

She repeated everything to him that she had said to Charles, more or less.  “Now get out so I can get dressed.”

Meanwhile, on Asgard …

The twins who were the High Priestess and Priest of Loki’s Temple on Asgard stood before the AllFather’s throne, bold, defiant, and holding hands because they were still scared of him.

“The prayers - both the conscious invocations of the faithful and the unconscious ones of those who unknowingly seek intercession - of the universe grow in fervour and frequency,” he said, not asking a question.  The King of the Gods did not ask questions, he only received answers.

The female twin, golden and fierce, squeezed her brother’s hand sharply and then took a step forward with a bowed head, “Yes, AllFather.  Our god’s worshippers - liars, artists, lovers, thieves, misbehaving children, anyone with a missed deadline, actually everyone at one time or another - save those barbarians with the red squiggles on their skin, they are weird - are growing in desperation.”

She did not ask a question either.  She wasn’t a priestess of Loki for nothing.

Odin could hear his supplicants - dads who had forgotten birthdays, kings who had had to address their people, military leaders the night before a battle, grandfathers sitting on porches with their grandchildren, even the bartenders - all beseeching him.  

He was getting a headache.

“Thor, along with his boon companions, has gone to discover the reason my wayward son is not attending to his duties.”

The twins, momentarily unable to control their eyebrows, looked askance at their King.

“They have been accompanied by his personal servant and his fe-, his longtime co-, his mis-, his frie-”

Odin tried to call Nora any number of things, but his mouth could not form even partial truths.  A universe without a God of Lies demanded only the most unadorned honesty.

He sighed.  “His wife has gone to fetch him home,” he finally whispered out.

The twins nodded to each other, relief plain on their beautiful faces.

On Sakaar …

The Grandmaster was waiting for Nora in a massive training room, quietly vibrating with excitement, rubbing his hands together.  A baker’s dozen of the creatures from his fighting stable were engaged in various exercises. A muck golem was having a very messy sparring match with something that looked like it was made out of vinyl.  A Naga had her tail coiled around the ankles of a rock monster to hold him in place while he did crunches. Something so fast it could barely be seen dodged spikes from a gorgeous woman with very dangerous hair.

As they approached, Thor whispered out of the side of his mouth, “So I have your permission and in advance forgiveness?”

Nora smiled at her host and quietly nodded, “Just hit him in the head and let’s see if we can get out of here before dinner.  The rest of you,” she said to Sif and the Warriors Three, “just try not to break anyone or get broken, ok?”

They made various sounds of annoyance, offense, affirmation, and amusement.

“AH!  My pretty princess!  You look … amazing!” the Grandmaster said with a broad smile.  As far as Nora could tell he actually meant it, but if you lived to be old enough your beauty standard probably expanded to include some pretty horrific things, including herself today.

She had chosen a different direction in her clothing today, wearing some of her oldest things from home.  Her grey suede boots, black leggings, and the green plaid dress that Loki had enchanted so it was perfectly restored and virtually indestructible.  Basically the same outfit she had worn the first time they’d had sex.

“Allow me to gather some … opponents for your attractive guards.  This should be quite the morning! And you, big fella,” he said, giving Thor a light punch to the bicep, “my champion has specifically asked to spar with you!  Lucky man!” He bustled off, followed as ever by the angry Topaz, who gave Nora a hard glare.

Slœgt was standing near a rack full of weapons, dressed only in a pair of black trews, his long feet bare.  He stared at Thor with bland aggression, wrapping leather straps around his palms and then up his arms. Nora wondered if … no, rather when he returned to himself if she could ever persuade him to paint his nails that same shade of midnight blue that they were naturally in this form.  It suited him.

Nora tightened her grip on Thor’s arm, letting out a chuff of shock.

“What is the matter?”

“Nothing.  I just want this done.  I want him back,” she said, as her eyes traced each swirl and mark on Slœgt’s torso, his upper arms, even on the tops of his feet.  They were identical to Loki’s. She had touched and stroked and licked them all, as well as the ones that couldn’t be seen because of his pants, so many times.  When he was properly aroused they were enormously sensitive and she could reduce her voracious husband to a quivering, moaning mass with just a few well placed brushes of her fingertip on the right ones.

When she looked back to his face he was practically glaring at her, his eyes blazing with fury.

He felt it the moment that princess whoever-she-was arrived, her arm being held by that little guard of hers, followed by the rest of her useless attendants.

Not that he was concerned, but it was his understanding that people were constantly trying to assassinate royalty and here she was walking around without a care in the world with hardly any protection at all.  At least the one servant that was with her, that little grey man, looked like he might be able to defend her if it came to that.

Didn’t she understand how dangerous Sakaar was?  How dangerous it was everywhere? 

Clearly not.  

So after he was done showing her how inadequate her escort was he was going to have to show her just how not safe she was, and hopefully she would scurry back to where ever she had come from and hide from the big bads of the universe.

He tried to convey as much menace as he could towards her, but all she did was cooly look him over while casually chatting with that blonde ass.  

Fine.  She could play it anyway she wanted.  Slœgt didn’t like games and he was going to make sure that she didn’t enjoy the one she was trying to play with him.

The first three bouts went fairly quickly, taking place in a dished pit that was like the arena in miniature.

Volstagg was pitted against what looked for all of the world like a reverse, goat-centaur, or something, which quickly learned that it’s boney skull wasn’t as tough as his opponent's legendary stomach.  It lay dazed, and Nora almost thought she could see animated birdies circling its head.

The next fight was something that might have been made of lava, or was just oddly shiny and hot, fighting Hogun, who it towered over.  The quiet warrior spent a few minutes dodging and assessing as it relentlessly stalked him. Finally, when it took a pass at him, he rolled under it, taking out its forward leg, and then rose up, grabbing it by the asbestos belt it wore, spinning around and around until he let the disoriented thing go, where it flew into the side of the pit and slid down into a heap, leaving a trail of sparks behind it.

Fandral’s bout was against a fighter who looked human/Asgardian and also fought with a blade.  They Errol Flynn’d around for twenty minutes, entertaining each other, Nora, and the Grandmaster, but not anyone else.  The other fighters and Topaz all prefered more blood and less banter, and eventually it was called a draw.

Sif’s fight was almost over before it was started.  She was fighting the Kree female, which should have been a battle for the ages, but the other warrior seemed tired and distracted, constantly looking over her shoulder at Slœgt who didn’t notice.  He was too busy trying to bore a hole in Nora’s head with his eyes, and by the time she looked back from him, Sif was standing on the Kree’s chest, her spearpoint hovering over the other fighter’s face.

“YEAH!  That’s how you do it!” someone roared.  It was another observer, a tremendously pretty black woman, in fighting gear who had been drinking steadily as she watched, clearly unimpressed.  “Come had a drink with me, you fierce bitch!”

Sif looked at her, blushing.  

To Nora’s shock the normally humourless Goddess of Battles actually joined the other woman, looking a little shy.

“Scrapper 142,” the Grandmaster told Nora.  “She is the finest scavenger on Sakaar! She even brought me- ah, look, my champion is about to fight yours.”

Nora looked to where Thor was approaching Loki/Slœgt, who was standing, unarmed and still only wearing pants and the leather wrappings on his hands and arms, doing that neck stretching thing, angling his head from side to side.

After having spent decades breaking up fights between the brothers, she now found herself in the position of not just encouraging one, but of rooting against her husband.  She just hoped it would go quickly.

It did.

Thor was on his ass in under a minute.

There was a deep silence from the Warriors Three, and Sif, still on the other side of the pit with Scrapper 142, put a hand to her mouth.

He was up again quickly, but was down again in another few minutes.  Slœgt just came at him over and over, center-punches, straight kicks to the chest and face, none of Loki’s subtle, graceful movements and strong defense, just angry hits, pure power, while using his height to keep Thor off balance and out of reach.  

But, losing or not, Thor had no quit in him, and it went on and on.  He got a few punches in, but he couldn’t get a headshot.

Eventually, Nora asked the Grandmaster if they could take a break.  He consented. “I have a tiny thing to attend to, so yes, a break.” He waved a finger in her face, like he was chiding a child, “But only a short one.”

“What is going on out there?” Nora asked Thor as he gaspingly drank a gallon of water.  “I mean I know Loki can usually give you a good fight, but this is embarrassing. I’m embarrassed for you,” she said, her unhappiness making her maybe a little mean.

“I do not understand it.  It is not so much his greater strength, or even size.  I cannot -”

Hogun shook his head and grumbled in disgust, “Stop fighting Loki.”

Thor looked at his friend, frowning in irritation, “Perhaps you are unaware of the plan.  I need to strike my brother in the head so he can be recalibrated.”

Nora shrugged, that was close enough.

“You are fighting Loki.  And losing. You must stop fighting Loki and start fighting Slœgt, or you will continue to lose,” the quiet one said to the astonished god.

“He really is your guy’s Silent Bob, isn’t he?  He doesn’t say much, but when he does...” Nora said.

The second round went rather differently.  Rather than a series of short fights ending with Thor on his ass or back, this battle went on and on.  Now Slœgt needed to use some small finesse as he had to weave away from flurries of head-shots, then move back in to try and land a few himself.  What started as an MMA extravaganza ended as an old-school, heavyweight boxing match as the two increasingly tired fighters simply stood toe to toe and tried to land punches.

In the end, Thor was more desperate to get his brother back than Slœgt was eager to make him look stupid, getting through his guard and landing a terrifyingly powerful blow to the jaw, sending the Jotun backwards, feet off of the floor, flying into the wall.

Nora slid down the side of pit, the Grandmaster crying out in surprise behind her.  Thor barely caught her before she hit the bottom. She shoved past him and ran to Loki, who was already starting to come around.  When she leaned over him to look into his eyes, he snapped at her, “Go check on your boy, little princess. It takes more than an Asgardian good-night kiss to put me down.”  And then he was up and stalking out of the training room, an offended stiffness to his back the only sign he had even been in a fight.

“I had forgotten how … puissant and sturdy the Jotnar are,” Thor said regretfully, shaking out his sore fist.

Sif, completely out of character, practically bounced over to Nora and the exhausted and battered Thor, clearly thrilled by the new friend she had made, “My prince, you will not conceive of who and what the one who goes by the name Scrapp-”

Nora ducked away quietly, following Loki.

She lost him in the labyrinthine corridors, passing other, smaller workout rooms, locker rooms where she saw things she wished she hadn’t, the garish splashes of color everywhere just making the headache she’d been fighting for weeks even worse.  Defeated, she leaned on a door for a few moments trying to remember how to get back, when it opened and she spilled into the room and Slœgt’s arms. 

He pulled her to him, sneering, his cold skin under her hands.  She wanted to push against him, to touch everywhere and everything, use her mouth, her skin, her cunt to beg him to come back to her.  It had been weeks and weeks since she had been touched and found herself unable to speak.

He didn’t seem to mind.

“Lost again, girlie?” he said, his voice jagged and unkind.  He took a grip on her marriage necklaces and wound them about his fist like he might on an unfaithful lover’s hair and yanked her up on to her toes, “I need something to wipe the taste of that fight out of my mouth.  You’ll do.” In spite of the seidr protecting her, his cold breath on her lips made them dry and sore, even as her mouth watered. 

Kiss me, she willed.  Kiss me and wake up. 

He did.  But not on the mouth.

Without touching her otherwise, she felt his hand push the short skirt of her dress out of the way and cup her possessively through the black cotton, his long claws extending and destroying the fabric, then two very long, dangerous fingers plunged into her with no preparation.

She was so wet he slid in with a juicy sound and Nora stood on her tiptoes, frightened of those talons and shocked at the suddenness of it all, a noise escaping her.

“Sssshhhhh, tiny thing, I won’t hurt you.  Much.” He started to fuck her roughly with his hand, jabbing hard, the heel of his hand still wrapped in thick leather was grinding on her clit like he hated the very idea of it, the squelching noises were obscene.  

Nora closed her eyes, trying to just to feel, her body jerking against the door with each thrust, the rest of her body untouched.  She needed to come almost immediately, but each time the clench of her around his fingers grew too pronounced he would change the rhythm, now long and deep, now bruising, now fast enough to make her feel raw.

Her head rolled back and forth on the metal door and she whispered a name.

Slœgt laughed, and her eyes flew open to see him still sneering, “I don’t care if you need to pretend I’m someone else, princess...” he hissed.  “I’m using you, too. I need to sleep tonight.”

Then he let her necklaces go and knelt, still holding her eyes, pulling his fingers out, and lifted her so her legs draped over him, her boots kicking into his back, as he fucked into her with his tongue, his fangs scraping over her mons.

Nora saw black and screamed, grabbing his horns for support, the long spiral of them warmer than the rest of him, and she snarled fingers in his hair as she did, using the leverage to ride his mouth.

As soon as she touched the base of his horns he went crazy.  She could feel him vibrating under her touch, which in turn worked its way through her body, making her flood into his lips and nearly fall off of his hands as she trembled.

“Fuck!” he growled into her, “Maybe I do care!”  He gave two hard licks deep in her, burying his nose against her clit, his claws biting into her ass, shredding the rest of her leggings, he jerked his head back. “Look at me, princess.  Watch.”

Nora forced herself to look down, to watch this being she didn’t know ravage her with her husband’s beautiful mouth.  She was dazed and her body confused, if she hadn’t been so tired, so in need of being touched, she would have shaken herself apart as her skin and her mind went to war.

She struggled to get loose.  This was wrong. She shouldn’t let him do this.  He wasn’t … he wasn’t … her’s. She wasn’t really his...

He grew maddeningly more aggressive and elusive, pushing her and then pulling back, like a parody of how Loki liked to play with her.  The tip of a claw toyed with her anus, making her shy away from it and harder onto his mouth. He moaned encouragement, his tongue now rubbing hard on her g-spot, his claw still scratching with a gentleness that threatened to turn to something else, his fangs now in her, and her hands cramping from how hard she was squeezing his horns.

When he bucked upwards, the one hard jolt sent her over the edge, her thighs convulsing around his head as she came, her cunt wildly spasming, her hips ramming herself into him over and over to prolong the shattering pleasure, her heart and mind mourning the faith she felt she had broken.

As the last echoes of the orgasm faded he lifted her legs with surprising gentleness, using his strength to hold her still in the air as he stood, shoving his cock into her hard, the new pressure and anger of the movement from something so well known and worshipped making her come again.

“You are made of fire,” he huffed into her skin where his face was buried in the crook of her neck, where Loki loved to bite and kiss.  He did neither. “I would let you burn my phallus off of me, it feels too good to stop,” he moaned, now the one that was desperate and out of control.

Her body was certain that this was it’s mate, it’s partner, no matter the difference in size, in action, in the horns, so when he came her body came too, both of them shouting together as they had over and over.  

When he pulled out and set her on unsteady legs he just looked at her for a few minutes, a peculiarly fond smile on his face.  “You don’t look like someone who just had the fucking of their life.”

She looked at the ground, her heart aching.  “That wasn’t the fucking of my life.”

And I was just unfaithful to the love of all of my lives, she added to herself.

His eyes narrowed, but before he could answer, there was a discreet little knock on the door she slumped against.

“My darlings?”  It was the Grandmaster.  Nora felt herself gaping in horror, while Slœgt tried not to laugh, “That was ... charming!  Princess, my god, what a voice you have. Slœgt! Well, you know how much I love to watch you work, but hearing it was nearly was good!  I have a had quite the afternoon!” 

He could not have sounded happier and it was all Nora could do not to pound her head into the wall.  

“I am throwing a little dinner in your honor tonight, princess.  Formal dress, but feel free to kick off your shoes under the table!  Slœgt … how would you like to escort her highness?” She could feel the gladiator smiling with malicious happiness at her.  The Grandmaster spoke before he could be answered, “I knew you’d be pleased. Now don’t wear each other out before tonight, my naughty sweethearts.”

When they had heard him patter away, followed by Topaz’s heavy tread, Slœgt gestured to the door, “I’m going to take a nap.  Wanna come?”

“Did you just say ‘wanna’?” Nora choked out.

“Yeah.  Why?”

Nora shook her head, “No reason.  Yes, let’s take a lie down.”

  
  



	5. I Don't Know You, But You Smell Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one gets any sleep.

“Stop staring at me.  It’s keeping me awake.”

“No it’s not.”

“It is.”

“So me, just laying here quietly, with my face turned towards you is what is keeping you awake, and not that screaming nightmare that you had just moments after closing your eyes not … fifteen minutes ago?  And then the rest of it?”

“I-”

“Because that’s what’s keeping me awake.  My throat is fine, by the way. Luckily you grabbed the torc rather than me or you’d be here arguing with a dead body,” the princess said in a very matter of fact tone, like her life was in danger on a regular basis.  As if she was not some spoiled little thing, out for a bit of rough with a monster. 

“I wouldn’t be arguing.  I’d be asleep, because at least you’d be quiet,” Slœgt grabbed a pillow and rolled away, covering his face.

“And you are a terrible liar,” she added, sounding unbelievably sad.

The fact that the princess was right about that, and the rest of it, meant that there was no way he was going to fall asleep.  The dream had hit him almost as soon as his eyes were closed. It was impossibly close this time, just the part of with the woman, her gore clotted hair - long and golden, no … short and dark - and her film-covered, unknowable eyes - blue or just the color of cold, dead earth - her features obscured by blood.  

But this time he knew that he had killed her.  He shook her body - hard, brutal, trying to wake her up, trying to absolve himself.

Then a blinding pain in his right eye shocked him awake, sending him reeling off of the bed and onto the floor, holding his eye and right side of his face, which felt like it was boiling off of the bone.  “WHAT THE FUCK?”

The princess’s face appeared over the side, also looking shocked, one hand on her neck, the other holding the jagged rock she had hit him with, “You’ll be fine.  The rock is embedded with carrion ant venom, it’ll wear off in a few seconds.” Then the rock was gone.

He had lain there, panting, until the pain faded and then climbed silently back into his bed and pretended to be asleep again.  Or tried to.

So her royalness was less helpless than she looked.

There was the slightest shifting as the princess climbed out of his bed, having to jump a bit.  He sat up and watched her walk to his bar and start sniffing bottles, finally she poured herself a glass of wine and motioned to the room, “This is … depressing.”

Slœgt looked around.  As the champion he rated the largest chamber in the arena, mostly white and clean, with a view of the city.  He had a large, rather fancy bed, his equipment, a few chairs, and a bar. What was depressing about that?

“Where were you carrying a venomous rock in that?” he asked, gesturing to the skimpy black under-dress she had on, sleeveless and short.

“You mean this?”  She raised the hand not holding her wine up to her shoulder and flicked it out flat, the jagged rock appearing from nowhere.  “You’re just lucky it wasn’t this,” she snapped her fingers around the rock and it turned into a long, narrow dagger, held with the casual confidence of someone who knew how to use it, “an eye-patch wouldn’t suit you.  At all.” She finished her drink and poured another, the dagger disappearing while she did it.

Slœgt got out of bed and paced to her, staring.  “Do that again,” he ordered.

She stayed where she was as he loomed over her, staring at her hand, and raised an eyebrow, “This?”

Flick.  Dagger. Flick.  No dagger.

“How are you doing that?”

She shrugged, “My husband taught me.  He’s always sure something terrible is going to happen to me,” she swept past him, carrying the bottle and glass, and took one of his chairs.  “No books?”

Now he shrugged.  “Not sure if I can read.”  Her eyes were enormous, and she drained another glass and poured again.  “You drink too much.”

“Not today I don’t.  How do you not know if you can read?”

It was a surprise to find that he wanted to tell her.  To tell her that he didn’t know what he knew, other than fighting, fucking, and nightmares.  That his whole life started less than a year ago, and that the only thing that had kept him from drowning in the vast, dark emptiness of his own past were those three things.  

Instead, he shrugged and got himself a drink.  Something grey. People were always sending him gifts for some reason and he only kept the liquor - and the panties - but he had no fucking clue what most of it was.  

It tasted like oil and smoke.  

“I mean, I can read signs and stuff, just not sure about anything longer.”

“You’re still a bad liar,” she crossed her long legs and stared into his eyes as they both drank.

She looked so tired.

And she was right.  He knew how to read, but books were thin on the ground on Sakaar.  And the few that he had managed to get his hands on were now in a box under his bed, next to the box of panties.  Every time he had tried to read one his head had throbbed like a fist that had been driven over and over into stone.  Something about it felt wrong. 

He would shift and rub his head, and found himself looking to his side over and over, like there was someone just out of the corner of his eye, and finally he gave up.  

There was a deep red mark under the torc she wore, and she fiddled with her beaded necklaces, nowhere near as cool as she pretended to be.  

“If your husband is so worried about you where is he?  He’s not that-,” suddenly Slœgt felt ill, “he’s not that blonde pile of muscles I just beat on, is he?”

“No,” she said, smiling.  

“Then who-, no, fuck it.  If you don’t care I don’t care.”

Her eyes narrowed at him, “Why do you think I don’t care?”

“Because you let me fuck you.  Hell, you were dying for it, so he must not-”

Flick.  

Dagger.

Throw.

Quicker than he could imagine.

There was a ‘fwanging’ vibration through his head, and he reached up behind him.  The knife was embedded in the wall between his horns, nearly parting his hair. 

“My husband is…” she stood up and paced a bit, “my husband is a mess.  He can’t be with me right now. I don’t know why. I suspect, but I don’t know, you know?  If he could be with me, he would be with me. No matter what. Nothing would stop him. He would do anything, will do anything, when he is able to do it.  He’s coming to me. And I’m going to wait.”

Well that was clear as blood.  

“That still doesn’t explain why you let me fuck you, princess.”

“Nora,” she said, stopping her pacing close to him.

“What?”

“Call me Nora.  People only call me princess when they don’t know me, want something from me, or are trying to annoy me.”

Slœgt reached out and grabbed the hem of her little dress, pulling her between his spread legs, his fingers crawling slowly upwards, snagging the delicate fabric.  “Well, all three things apply in my case. Princess.” His claws shredded through the silk and lace, her hands clutched at his hair as he pushed the tattered garment apart, ready to put his mouth on everything he hadn’t the first time, when the sight of her stopped him.

“What is that?” he said, his heart pounding in dread.

Nora felt as if she was being slowly divided into pieces that were going to be mailed to the far corners of the universe, or that she wished that was happening to her.  

When Loki - she had to think of him as Loki or she would end up going a little mad - pulled her close, his red eyes no longer bright but dark with lust, his erection pushing against the thick fabric of his workout pants, she went.  The cold of his hands, bearable with the torc but still apparent, making her nipples ache.

She needed his ever-so-slightly warmer mouth to soothe them.

But when he destroyed her poor slip, something stopped him.  His voice was furious and ice began to creep up the window behind him.  “What is this?” He pointed at her chest.

If he didn’t know what they were then maybe he really wasn’t Loki and she really was… Oh, that.  The stab through her stomach had healed all of the way, but the second one was trickier. The healers on Asgard had told her that it would fade away with time, but that because of how old she was the thinness of her skin would make it take a while.  Anyway, it was barely pinker than her skin, even if it was long. She could still remember the sound the blade had made piercing her breast-bone.

“Oh, that’s a scar,” she said, feeling a bit dumb since clearly he knew what a scar was, “it isn’t too bad, is it?”  

“Why do you have it?”  Now he sounded calm. Too calm.  “Papercut? One of those little in the home accidents that happen every day?”

Any slight, self-hating doubts she had about who he was were gone in that moment.  Loki had a rhythm to these things and Slœgt was playing true to the form she knew. Anger.  Deceptive tranquility. Next would be sardonic humor.

Nora’s mind vacillated between elation and just a little fear.

“I mean if your unparalleled, caring, attentive, and apparently INVISIBLE husband is so concerned for your well-being then I would expect you to be untouched.  Your flesh should be as flawless as your brain is cracked for thinking you are inviolable.”

Rising back towards anger.

“After all he showed you some oh-so clever tricks that are sure to be all of the surety of safety,” he stood up, and Nora backed away from him slowly, “a princess would require whilst wandering through the universe…”

Now anger, fully achieved, turned mean.

“Because, I suspect that your hilariously, lamentable guardians - a dolt, a dullard, a harridan, a fop, and that golden buffoon - are in no way sufficient to keep you safe.  If they can even be troubled to commit to their task.”

Loki swaggering slowly closer, brows lowered, eyes slits.

Nora keeping pace, stepping slowly backwards, hoped that she wouldn’t trip over anything, relieved that he had so few possessions.

He looked around, every gesture exaggerated.

“Where are they?  Leaving their precious charge in the hands and lair of a barbaric monster that wants nothing more than to despoil her while she waits for her contemptible, undeserving spouse?”

“I’m pretty sure that you took care of the despoiling part before we even got to your ‘lair’, you kn-”

“Enough!” he growled, on her as she backed into the high bed.  She considered trying to crawl up and over it but thought better.  It was built for someone eight feet tall, and she was too old.

And then, there was the question of if she wanted to get away at all.

Then he took her.

No other words for it.

The bed groaned and lurched under the force of his lifting her onto it and then caging her with his body - horns digging into the mattress on either side of her face, thighs pushing her knees painfully wide, hands pinning her elbows in place, fanged teeth holding, very nearly opening, the skin where her neck met her shoulder - until she stopped struggling.

It didn’t take long for her fight or flight instincts to be overwhelmed by her even greater instinct to let him have her in any way he wanted her.

Nora stayed perfectly still, save for a deep trembling that worked from her core outwards.  He bit and laved her skin, working down to where the scar bisected the space between her breasts.  “Oh, princess...” he breathed against it, now slowly, with long swipes of his tongue, tender nips, and languorous kisses, tried to heal a wound that she had long since stopped thinking about.  

“Say ‘inviolate’ again,” she whispered.  “Say ‘surety,’ and ‘lamentable,’” she felt tears start to leak from the corner of her eyes.

He looked up, his face blank, and then frowned, tenderness forgotten as he shoved a hand between her legs, catching her clit at the v of his fingers, fucking it hard, the clawed tips teasing her open further and further while he sucked first one breast and then the other harder enough to make her slam up against him.

She turned her head and rubbed her face against his hair, the place where the ridged length of his horns branched from his skull falling under her mouth, and she found herself licking and kissing them wildly.  They were painfully cold even now and she craved them.

Jerking himself free of her, Loki rose to kneeling above her, pulling his cock out, stroking it with one black nailed hand, his chest heaving and flushed deep blue.  “You want to taste me, princess?” he sneered, and grabbed a handful of her hair, his claws lightly scratching her scalp, and pulled her face against his penis, “This tastes better.”

Nora raised an eyebrow and smiled at her area of expertise, “Say ‘buffoon’ again,” she whispered against his most sensitive flesh, and then took the head in her mouth, using her tongue to play with it while one hand held his perfect ass and the other stroked where his heavy balls strained, finding where the shaft continued into the perineum, pushing hard.

A moan, a hiss, her name escaped him, and he twisted her hair.  The cold, salt taste of his precum trailed across her tongue and she moaned around him as well.  He was so delicious...

When he tried to fuck into her mouth she grabbed his scrotum and squeezed just as exactly hard as she knew he could stand it.

Pulling free, his penis now engorged to midnight blue, his eyes burning, he shoved her back down and threw himself lower, slithering backwards to rub the limit of his horns back and forth between her legs, each of the minute ridges catching over and over, his silky hair tickling her wetness.  Nora writhed, her body so heavy and desperate that she couldn’t move otherwise. She was nearly sick with need.

“Please…” she whispered.

He looked up, sneering, “Please what, princess?”

She lay her head back and laughed weakly.  “Say ‘unparallelled,’” she managed to gasp out before he rose up and drove into her, pushing breath and thought from her mind.  Nora felt so feeble she wasn’t even able to grasp the sheets, as Loki (‘LokiLokiLoki...’ she chanted in her head) scooped up with his hips, hitting every place within and without that always craved him.  

She laughed again, this time at herself.  As if there were a speck of her DNA that didn’t crave every iota of him.  Every glorious inch of his body, every clever, beautiful word that spilled from his lips, every twisted, brilliant thought in his head.  

She wanted it all, she wouldn’t do without any.

“Come for me, princess,” he commanded, licking delicately into her mouth while his hips battered her towards her end.  

Nora held out as long as she could, afraid of how she would feel, of what he would say, when the spell of the two of them was broken, but some part of him knew her body as well as it ever had, and when he reached between them and just barely tapped her clit she exploded under him.

The clasp of her cunt, pulling him in, her hips wrenching as she spasmed over and over, a musical hitch and then a scream, and he let go, too, pulling her into his arms, pressing her face to his cool chest and he rode out pleasure and devastation in equal measure.

He rolled off of her before collapsing.

This time they both slept.

In the end it was the simplest, littlest, oldest thing.  His very first gift to her that brought him back.

He started to wake up.  

Something felt wonderful.  Silky and soft. His fingers worked their way deeper into it.  Oh. He thought, how sad. There was a long, curved scar under the lush hair.  He petted it gently, making a fretting noise to himself.

She stirred where her back curved against his chest, her lovely posterior nestled against his quickly waking cock.  She made an exhausted noise.

“Poor treasure,” Loki crooned, nuzzling Nora’s ear.

  
  
  



	6. All right, we're back together again. What the Hel do we do next?* (*with apologies to Stephen King).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki and Nora discuss things.

 

Nora snuggled backwards into the dream she was having about Loki, sighing in her sleep, nuzzling against his bicep where her head rested.  If should could just stay asleep a little longer, just remain for a few more minutes then she would face the real world the way she wanted to.  Face it and spit in its eye.

His other arm slowly tightened around her, a long leg coiled over hers, and his chin gently rested on the crown of her head, so she was encased in warmth and engulfed in strength.  

“Don’t wake up…” she begged, turning her face so it was buried against his skin, breathing in juniper and salt and earth.  She just wanted a little longer, to be where she had him back.  Then, maybe, she could get up and fight again.

“Nora….”  A voice moaned in her ear, waking her - a beautiful voice, dark, harsh, and filled with pain.

At the same moment the arms that been wrapped around her convulsed, squeezing, the breath brushing her ear starting to come in hoarse pants, the chest she was pressed to began to heave behind her, and he gave a whining cry, like a child who was suffering from a sudden fright as the nightmare she had woken him from before had come back to finish them both off.

This time, as if he was protecting the nightmare from her interference, Nora found herself tossed across the room, her body heavily hitting the throne-like chair, breaking off her scream when her back struck one of the arms.

Too stunned for pain, she pulled herself up and stared at the bed where Slœgt’s shadowy, blanketed figure seemed to be fighting with someone.

“ Slœgt ,” she called out, pulling herself ungracefully to her feet.  She wasn’t the young(ish) woman she had been when she had first met Loki, no matter what the Asgardian healers had done,  and if she was honest, she could do with a year or two of not getting hurt.  Holding her back with her left hand, and a dagger with her right, she approached him slowly.  “You need to wake up-”

A ghostly white hand shot out from under the silk sheets and pulled her down, trapping her legs and tossing her onto her already aching back, her weapon gone.  

Her snarling, feral husband crouched over her body, one of her wrists pinned beneath his foot, the other being crushed by his knee, the edge of her dagger now pressing her chin up.  Green eyes blazed from behind the tangles and snarls of his hair, and he growled at her like a wolf defending the heart of his territory.  He grabbed a handful of hers, pulling her head back so her throat was bared to him.

“I will shave that lying skin from you, shifter…” he hissed, “starting with your deceiver’s face!  How dare you think to steal Nora’s form?”  

She knew to keep her daggers sharp, and the faint slit was so fine she barely felt it.

“Loki…” she gritted out, trying not to cut herself further.  “I’m me...”

He leaned down, his back arched like a cat, his face so close it was distorted.  His eyes were like those of a horse trampling a viper, and spittal from his lips landed on hers.  Even mad he was beautiful.  “Liar!” he exhaled at her, “My treasure is dead, and I will drag you to the next world to be her slave for this affront!”

For a moment terror like acid poured through Nora’s veins, and she struggled and cried.  

No. 

She couldn’t let him kill her.  It would destroy whatever was left of him.  Nora he had never been so frightened, to know that he would finish what he had failed to do when they had first been close to each other those decades before in New York.  Her heart pounded hard enough to hurt, and her hands ached where he was grinding down on them.  

“Please,” she begged, “at least not with that.   You gave it to me for my birthday years ago.  We were on Domere, and you have a match for it.  You ‘christened’ the hilt of yours by-”

“Silence!  I do not know how you know this but I will not have you foul a sacred memory!”  The blade licked against her jaw, just a stinging nick, but his mouth paled and tensed as if he was struggling, and his normally steady hands trembled with effort.

But Nora rushed on, “Afterwards you walked me to a glade in the forest, and there was a pool of water that smelled like orchids and was so warm, and I laughed at you for being romantic and you picked me up and threw me in the water, fully clothed.  And then jumped in after me.  You refused to use your magic and it took us forever to peel each other naked, but we stayed there all night, and in the morning you fed me pears that tasted of port and woodsmoke.”

For a second he stared at her with such hate Nora thought it would kill her, then he climbed away from her, pacing and pointing the blade at her.  His cock, at least, knew her, and it was like marble where it thrust aggressively against his stomach.

Nora knelt on the bed, clutching a blanket to her, but afraid to move further.

He huffed, his mouth open, so furious she was certain he would just throw himself on her, stabbing and slashing until she was nothing but meat and bone.

“My wife would not have slept with that monster!” he howled, tears in his eyes.  

Later, she couldn’t remember moving.

The crack of the slap echoed through the room and through Nora’s already painful hand.  

Loki stared down at her, the mark of her palm on his cheek as red as a burn.  

“Your wife,” she spat at him, “is smart enough to know her spouse!  No matter what!  No matter the face or the sex or the species!  And you are so… moronic you don’t even know me standing naked in front of you…  I sleep with a monster every night, my monster...” she trailed off, defeated.  It was too much.  She was exhausted.

And guilt was burning through her, leaving nothing but char behind.  Because she had slept with Slœgt .  Even if Loki had been buried in him, could she really say she hadn’t been unfaithful?   Wasn’t there a part of her that deserved this?

But that hate in his eyes!

Nora dropped her head, standing close enough that he could slit her throat with the slightest gesture.  Not that distance would matter.  If he had wanted to kill her, she would be dead.  

His body vibrated.  She could hear him squeezing the hilt of her dagger tightly enough to make the metal groan.  

A drop of blood fell from her and landed on his thigh.

All she wanted was to throw herself into his arms and sob.  To take all of the comfort that Loki always wished to give her, to let him care for her.  It was so… perfect, actually.  He was missing a chance to do all of his favorite things, the things she most resisted.  The things that she fought, needing to be strong, or at least to seem that way.   

Even if she always, eventually, succumbed for a time.

But now she was willing, desperate for it and he was going to miss the whole thing and kill her instead.

And then Thor would explain everything and she was almost sorry she wouldn’t be there to see what happened next.  No doubt there would be songs written about it.  If there were any survivors to write them.

Fucking Loki.  Even after decades, still finding new ways to be the universe’s most problematic… just the most problematic.

Not able to help herself, Nora made a terrible, snorting noise, filled with snot and tears, her shoulders shaking .

Delicate fingertips softly touched her hair.  “Nora?” he whispered.

She froze, “What?”

“Only you would laugh at me, at a time like this,” he said, pulling her to his chest.

 

Nora looked up at him, her chin resting on his chest, her face blotchy with tears.  Rusty with dried blood.

She had always looked terrible when she cried.

Her words raced over themselves, as if out of control on their way down a steep hill, “I knew it was you.  I knew he was you.  I knew.  I needed to try everything and I couldn’t wait.”

She tried to pull herself away.  “I should have waited, I should have-”

As if he would allow such a thing.  

Except his legs felt odd.

When he found himself on his knees, his face pressed to her now, it was not a shock.  Surely this is where he always belonged, after all.  Perpetually begging her forgiveness and offering supplication?  

“I left you.  I left you to die,” he said.  Hiding his face in shame.  “It was my fault as much as when… when Frigga-”

Nora’s hand grabbed his chin and yanked his face up to look at her.  “You fell off of a planet.  Which, admittedly is  _ epically  _ clumsy, especially for someone so graceful.  And if I do one thing before I die it is going to be to get you to forgive yourself for her death.  You can’t hold yourself responsible for all of the wrong in the universe.  No one can be that narcissistic.”

“Ha…”  He traced the fine scar between her breasts.  “The healers on Asgard?”

“Yes.  Um, would you mind?  I think I have enough scars for now,” she said, gesturing to her jaw, to under her chin.

He had cut her.  

His viscera felt like rot.

Standing and lifting Nora, Loki caused a simple, black velvet caftan to appear around her.  After gently depositing her on the bed he summoned his healing magic.  It came readily and in force.  Apparently months of inactivity had caused his mystical energies to build.  With as much care as he could muster he traced green fire over the wounds, closing them and clearing the blood away.

He left himself naked.  He knew Nora would never allow him the expiation of debasing himself before her, but at least he could do this.  

For a moment he simply leaned over her, a hand on the pillow next to her head, and stared at her bright eyes.  How could she look at him that way?  Still?

He had been certain she was dead.  When the Dark Elf’s blade had struck through her, when he had seen it, it had  _ eradicated _ him.  Eliminated his ability to exist.  Because there could be no universe in which there would be a Loki who allowed Nora to die.  He had failed at what was essential. 

When he had woken on Sakaar, in a pile of garbage, the ragged remains of his personality had one thought, “How fitting...”  Then there had been a beautiful, dark woman, swaying with drink, smiling with contempt - also fitting - and pain and darkness.  

He lay beside Nora, curling towards her body, an arm at her waist.  

“When I found out the truth of my parentage I thought,  ‘How nice.  Too much of a monster for one father, not enough for the other.  I can truly fail at anything.’   Over time, when Thanos held me, when I learned of my mother’s death, when I was at my lowest, I would think about being a Jotunn.  How lovely it must be to be made of cold.  To be simple.  To want nothing but to kill, and conquer, and fuck.”

“Because that’s soooo different than the Asgardians...” she murmured, turning towards him, burying her face against his shoulder.   For a moment he considered removing her robe, but did not.  It was chilly in this barren, ugly room.

“I eventually  made up in my mind who I might have been.  Had I been a proper Frost Giant.  How strong I would be.  How easily pleased.  I gave him a name, I gave him likes and wants.  He kept me from going mad at times.”

“Madder.”

“Well, yes.”  He kissed her forehead and pushed down a sob at being able to do so.  He gathered her closer.

“You never mentioned him,” her voice was tentative.  As if waiting for him to castigate her again for her imagined infidelity.  The look on her face when he had accused her would never leave him.  He would not allow it himself to forget.

“It is one thing to have imaginary friends as a child, but quite another to have one as an adult.  I was embarrassed.  And after being with you I rarely needed him.  Was he… was he courteous to you?”  Even he could not think of a better way to put something so delicate.

She snorted again, and his heart leapt at the sound, “I don’t know if that’s how I’d put it.  He was fierce, and wild, but he never harmed me.  Never did anything I didn’t want.”  She lifted her head, gulping, “Loki, I -”

“No,” he tenderly pushed her back down.  “You have nothing to apologise for.”  With one of those mercurial turns he could not even understand in himself, he found himself kissing the top of her head and smiling into her hair.  “You seemed to enjoy his, I should say rather, my horns.   Greatly...  Do not think for a moment that is the last you will see of them.  Or feel.”

Nora shook her head, “Take this thing off of me.  I need to more of  you.”

Her skin was like fire in the cold room, and he pulled her thigh over his hip so his cock could nestle within her groove, softly rubbing in the smallest of motions, anointing himself with her pleasure, whispering magic against her lips so she came over and over, and when he slipped himself into her, the claws that had buried themselves in his mind and heart for so long released and he let himself free.

Afterwards Loki stayed in Nora, using magic to keep himself hard so they would be joined as deeply as possible.  

There was a discreet knock at his door.  They both jumped, having forgotten where they were.

“Princess?  My champion?  Darlings?  Not to disturb your well-earned rest, but dinner is in an hour.  I’ve had some lovely outfits created just for the two of you.  Now  Slœgt  has to wear his, but I would consider it a special treat if you wore yours, highness.  Nora,” the Grandmaster giggled like a naughty schoolgirl at using her name.  “Now don’t be late or I will be so cross with both of you.”

Someone spoke.

“No, Topaz, not  _ melting _ them cross.  I - why would you think that?”

They waited until he walked away.

“Shit,” they said as one.


	7. We Have to Get Off This Planet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's feast time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished! Now I can get back to fic where I belong.

Thor strolled through the Grandmaster’s latest celebration, drinking something that was a bit like the grape soda he had developed a taste for whilst living on Midgard.  Slightly flat grape soda doctored with manifold aphrodisiacs.

Fortunately the strength of his Asgardian physiognomy seemed to make him immune to the seductive powers of the drink.  

Although he did find himself more … aware than normal of Fandral.

And Sif.

And her new friend, the extremely attractive Scrapper.

And, most disturbingly, of the Grandmaster’s right hand thug, Topaz.  She had very pretty hair. And Godbreaker thighs. 

He eyed his drink, dropped it on the tray of a passing server, and wondered again what they were going to do about Loki.  

Sakaar grew more dangerous for them to stay on with each passing moment, and he was beginning to think that it would easier to simply kidnap  Slœgt and find a way to shake the Loki out of him after they made their escape.

At his latest count, Thor had wondered what they were going to do about Loki approximately five thousand four hundred and ninety-two times.  When he thought about the fact that he hadn’t started keeping count until AFTER he had first been exiled to Midgard and Loki had become the All-Father temporarily, he revised upwards to twenty-thousand four hundred and ninety-two times.

While adding the times, he wondered what they were going to do about Nora, and then it came to twenty thousand four hundred and ninety-four.  Ninety three had been the time she had been kidnapped while he and Loki had been defeating the Grand Army of the Mecha-Squid, and ninety four was now watching her sweeping through the electric blue and orange party room on the arm of the Grandmaster, who was alternating waving to the throng of lackeys and hangers on and dotingly whispering into Nora’s ear as she smiled up fondly at him.

She was even laughing at his jokes.  Laughing rather hard.

The ‘come hither’ laugh that she normally reserved for his brother alone.

And she was wearing lamé!  A very tight, high cut and low cut copper lamé gown in the Sakaaran style, showing the long curve of her graceful back where it started to flare out into her lovely buttocks.  There was flash of her leg as the gown gaped to reveal the inner soft flesh of her thigh and the front of her-

Bor damn that grape soda!  

Thor growled and as subtly as possible gave a small, sharp, shock to his penis, which was not especially  harmed by the jolt but did mind its manners- at least in regards to the woman he liked to consider his sister.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Excuse me for just a moment, princess,” the Grandmaster whispered very close in Nora’s ear, just after insisting she had to call him by his given name - En Dwi Gast.  

She wasn’t certain that was possible.  For instance, which part was his given name and which was his surname?  Did one of the oldest creatures in existence HAVE a surname, actually? He had family, she’d had the pleasure of watching him melt his cousin just before the start of the party.  After the melt he immediately started playing some sort of keyboard while singing what seemed to be a space disco song he was working on as a theme for his gladiatorial games.

So that horrific image was stuck in her mind, and it was taking everything she had not to try and tug the horrible, gaudy dress she was wearing for him both up and down, and over for that matter, at the same time.  It was like being naked in public, except it was worse because the gown was too tight and just a little itchy around the plunging neckline so she didn’t even have the luxury of comfort.

That didn’t even begin to cover how miserable her feet were in the sky-high, also shiny heels that went with the idiotic dress.  She wanted her boots. And then she wanted to kick En Dwi Gast in his... Gasts with them.

“ Everyone!  Everyone!” The Grandmaster raised his arms, long sleeves sliding back to show where the blue make-up he wore to accent his mouth and eyes had been been extended to his arms.   He was bedecked with lovely lines and curves that mimicked the ones on  Slœgt’s body.  

Loki’s markings.  

Exactly.

Nora poured a glass of something sort of like champagne into her mouth to stop from growling at how intimately he seemed to know how those marks looked.  Then she realised that the drink was probably doctored with something she didn’t want to be ingesting and that was just great, too.

“Now, my naughty darlings, let us all … adjourn to the … feast I have had prepared to honor both my very, very special guest, Princess Nora of,” he stopped and made a grand gesture with his arms, “somewhere! Or other!  I think. And, of course, my glorious champion, Slœgt! Of -” again he made that same, grand but slightly confused gesture, and then a very pleased smile crossed his face, “My Place!”

Nora recognised the make-up markings were a way of honoring Slœgt, but he considered Slœgt to be property.  His favorite property, but still property. 

The doors to the room slowly opened and music - a variation on the piece that the Grandmaster had been noodling at, post-melt - played by what sounded like keytar and an electrified hammered dulcimer, swelled.  

Then Loki entered the room, in Slœgt-guise, dressed in traditional Jotunn warrior garb and every rational thought dropped to the bottom of Nora’s brain, so she was left with just her monkey mind rattling it’s cage, as his appearance and the Sakaaran fly both hit her libido with shocking force.

He looked bored, indifferent to the ‘ooohhhhsss,’ and even the ‘ahhhhssss’ of the crowd.  Like he wanted a drink, some food, and then to get out of there. An expression unknown to the face of her adoration starved spouse.  Slœgt looked blase to the point of sorrow. 

That aloof ennui was maddening enough to Nora, but the costume…

She had seen it before, on other Jotunns they had run into from time to time.  But even on the still rare occasions when Loki reverted to his birth-form he always wore his normal, exceptional wardrobe of Asgardian armor or lounging garb (apparently the Aesir only had two speeds, killing or drinking) or his Midgardian couture.   

Or nothing.

This was like his naked form in public, except  _ so much _ better.

Nora wasn’t sure if it was the black suede kilt that hung from his narrow hips by a thick belt studded with golden runes.  Or maybe it was the hardened leather vambraces ending in half gauntlets that left his long, cobalt fingers and fir green nails bare.  Or it could have been the troll-skin boots that were laced to his bare thighs, with gilded shin guards strapped around his calves. Or possibly the strangely delicate chain of the same blue metal as Loki’s favorite daggers, dripping with gemstones that she didn’t know anything about, draped between his horns and gracing his forehead like a coronet.  Or the ever so barely visible pearlescent powder that covered all of his beautiful skin, making him look as if he had been bedecked with flurries.

Or, just maybe, it was because of the small, deep flicker of green that she could see in his eyes, the hint of his most alluring smile, that he allowed only as he passed close to her, where no one else could see.  And that she had just gotten him back and now they had to play this fucking game because the Grandmaster didn’t understand that no matter what he called himself, what he looked like, or what world, realm, or universe they were in, Loki belonged to Nora and no one else.  

And right then, or as close to right then as possible, she had to have him.

The Grandmaster turned his head and gave her a cheesy smile, applauding his best toy, the faux-tunn markings also visible on his chest.

The sight of that presumptuous decoration all over the skinny slaveholder was what decided for her on something that she had been thinking about since arriving on Garbageheim.  She wasn’t just going to free her husband so they could run off and have more adventures. 

They were going to free everyone.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The most interminable feast in the history of excessive eating started with the Grandmaster giving a speech.  

“My fellow Sakkarrans!  The important ones, anyway, before you begin to enjoy YET MORE of my endless largess, I have a few words...”

Loki had given up trying to pretend he was Slœgt the moment he had seen Nora in that ridiculous dress as well as the look in her eyes when she saw him.  As he walked close to her, he could see the faint flush of her skin as well as the smell of near to painful concupiscence overcoming her, which overcame him as well.

After his promenade for the viewing pleasure of the Grandmaster’s guests he stepped around a Kronan female, one of his fellow gladiators, using the enormous creature to hide him briefly from view.  With a bit of swift seider he separated into a clone of his Jotunn self and his own person, shape-changed to look like one of the wait staff.

The massive head-table in the Grandmaster’s tacky approximation of the feast hall on Asgard which had been created in his special guest’s honor (He still really didn’t understand where Nora was from.  Or care for that matter), was twice as wide as it needed to be, which made it Loki’s favorite piece of furniture that he had not designed himself. 

As if made for his purpose, it gave him plenty of room to crawl under it comfortably without being kicked or accidently brushing any of the guests.

Nora’s legs were crossed, and her toe was tapping the air in agitation.  The slippery copper fabric had fallen to either side of them, giving him a complete view of their length and the black silk panties she was wearing.   They were delightfully damp.

She had pushed off her shoes so only her toes were in them, and he could see how red and sore her feet looked.  

Just another crime to add to his friend  En Dwi Gast’s tally.  

Loki lifted one of her feet, slipping off the vulgar pump she had been forced to wear, and softly began to rub it.

Nora jerked and started to kick.

With a private, not entirely kind smile, Loki yanked her down into his lap and slammed his hand over her mouth at the same moment that he created an illusion of her in the seat she had just vacated, looking lovely and hanging on the Grandmaster’s every word.

For a second she fought him until she saw who it was and sagged, rolling her eyes in annoyance, a familiar, beloved frown forming under his palm.

He lifted his hand from her mouth, allowing his fingers to lightly trace over her lips as they moved away.  “He’ll be going on for a while, so I thought we might better occupy ourselves,” his mind whispered into her’s.

Normally Nora could not hear him mind to mind, except when they had recently performed some manner of ritual with her acting as his High Priestess, and then only for a short time.  But when he had come back to himself his godhead had been deluged with the anxious prayers of his worshippers. Both those who knew they venerated him and those who simply thought they were talking to themselves.  Storytellers, liars, thieves, actors, poets, conmen, lovers, songwriters, children who feared getting in trouble, adulterers who dreaded getting caught, the desperate, the lonely, the lost, cooks, madmen, and politicians all begged on their literal and metaphoric knees for his intercession.  

He was bristling with power and could speak to Nora’s mind effortlessly.  

He suspected he had enough power to more than merely speak to it.

That she could not speak back to him was normally a curse, however in this case just added to diversion he was planning for them both.  

Diversion.  He snorted at himself.  Everything in his life that happened when he was not fucking Nora was the diversion.  He had been  _ diverted _ for a year.  He would be damned if he would wait for their escape plan to come to fruition before he would again take up his great purpose.

In the dim light under the table, Nora’s eyes were almost pure black, and when he started kissing her throat she moaned, grabbing his hand and thrusting it between her own legs.  “Shhhhh … treasure, you have to be very, very quiet. Unless you want us to be found. Knowing En Dwi Gast as I do, it’s a coin toss as to if he’d melt us to a lovingly conjoined puddle of slag or try and join in,” he said to her mind, even as he pushed under the silk and let her cunt weep into his cupped hand whilst one finger circled her hard, swollen clit.

Nora rubbed her face against his chest, wrapping her hands around the golden belt at his hips, trying to make him move faster, go harder.

He shifted his hand, the silk tearing under the stress, so he could slowly fuck her with two fingers as his gauntleted palm punished her clit.  She bit his nipple hard enough to make him jump and then sucked on the wound she had made. “Bad girl…” he purred in her mind.

Rumbling right against her brain’s pleasure center.

Her center clamped onto his fingers, her back bowing as her hips thrust towards him.  Loki grabbed her throat, forcing her mouth open and onto his to he could suckle on her tongue and keep her from screaming the table, and maybe the roof down.  

Inside her head he nuzzled against the places that produced her dopamine, her vasopressin, her endorphins, flooding her with more pleasure, with more closeness, with more trust.  Loki was pretty certain Nora would kill him later when she found out what he was doing, but for the moment the bliss of feeling her euphoria made his later demise seem worthwhile.

He shoved aside the skirt of his little costume and thrust through the torn silk into her, likewise pushing her straight into another orgasm with just a small nudge.  The pull of her ecstacy dragging him all of the way into her with one spasm, his cock bottoming out, the force pushing them along the cold floor.

After who knew how long of striving with his treasure, Loki could hear the sound of the Grandmaster’s speech winding down.  Gasping for breath, his body soaked with sweat, wondering how to keep  _ himself _ quiet when he finally spent into the cauldron of frenzy between Nora’s legs.  

Nora was doing an excellent job of silencing herself by keeping her teeth deep in the muscle of his shoulder as she shook and trembled, and then wept through one climax after another.  How he wished she was strong enough to break the skin, to scar him, so that in the future if he were ever to be lost again those who found him would know he was already owned.

“Treasure…” he hissed into her mind, and she pulled him tighter, held him closer, and he felt himself go over the edge into nothingness, safety, and demolishing pleasure.

When the applause for the Grandmaster’s speech broke out, they were still joined and trying to remember how to breathe.  Nora used the cover of the noise to gasp into his ear, “Kill you…”

He kissed her forehead with a gentle smile, “I love you, as well,” he whispered as he withdrew from her tender cunt and her equally tender mind.  “But after we are home, yes?”

“Yes,” she answered, brushing her lips over his cheek.

  
  
  



	8. It’s Important to Always Make New Friends, But Keep the Old One's, Too.  You Never Know Who You Might Need.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki and Nora go to a party.

After the feast ended things  got moving.

Another night on Sakaar, another orgy.

It occurred to Loki that once upon a time in his life he would have considered this to be a high end problem rather than a low-level irritant.  Like the time he had spent picking which of his various, lovingly burnished helms he would wear to terrify his enemies on the battlefield, something that had lost its luster.  

Perhaps time and monogamy had finally matured him to the point of finding this whole business a little tawdry.  

More likely it was that the Grandmaster had attached himself like a  _ lampetra fluviatilis _ to Nora’s side, perpetually offering her plates of delicacies and prettily coloured drinks all liberally doctored with yet more amative enhancers.  Fortunately when Loki had been playing with her brain chemistry he had figured out a way to offer her some temporary protection from the ones that worked on inhibitions if not the ones that directly targeted the generative organs.  

In typical Nora fashion she thanked him AND told him she was going to punch him in the face for messing with her head.   

Not that she would.  His sweet wife was regrettably non-violent, as well as wise enough to know she would only hurt her delicate fist if she were to suddenly change her ways and take a swing at him.  

Now he just needed to find a way to extricate her from their host.  Then remove the ‘obedience disk’ that had been implanted under his skin - being the Grandmaster’s darling champion meaning that he had both more AND less freedom than the other gladiators  - and find a way to get them from the surface of the planet to their ship without being seen. 

Thor and his friends as well, he supposed.  It was good of them to come with Nora after all.  

Thinking of his brother… 

Loki worked his way through the rainbow of a crowd, trying not to slap away the hands that stroked his hair, his skin, his loincloth covered loins, as he passed.  He had always hated being touched without permission, but Slœgt had no such delicacy. Not that he had not occasionally turned someone he did not care for into an ice sculpture for presuming too much.  

The Grandmaster would use them as decorations and to keep drinks cold until the soiree was over and then would have them thawed or shattered, dependent on how well the evening had gone.

Propped up in a corner he saw Sif and Scrapper 142 practically eating each other’s … mouths for the moment.  The Scrapper was another great favorite of the Grandmaster’s, and had been the one to bring Loki to him. He idly wondered if he should do something to her for that or if being Sif’s newest obsession would be punishment enough?

Fandral, having also decided not to forgo the party favors, was telling a story whilst being orally pleasured by a two-headed D’finan.  It was kneeling between his legs so one head could take care of the front and the other of the back. It said much about how the duelist spent his free time that he not only was able to tell the tale, but his tone never grew distracted.  

He even finished his ale and called for a second.

Loki hated to be impressed, but he was anyway.

Volstagg was no doubt dividing his time between the chocolate fountain and the stream of melted cheese. The cheerful glutton was a faithful husband to every wife he had ever had.  Hopefully he would not end up drowning himself, as they still might need him for part of the whole escape process. 

Hogan was sitting on a couch next to a very complicated five-some.  Reading a book. 

Finally, he found Thor having what looked to be a very vigorous conversation at Topaz.  He seemed very eager to persuade the Grandmaster’s right fist about something based on the size of his … gesculations as he spoke.  While she looked about ready to gnaw her own head off to escape his brother’s enthusiasm.

He wondered if he should tell Thor what the brutal but still dangerously tempting woman’s erotic weakness was?  

No. 

If he could not figure it out for himself then he was not ready for that particular ride.

“You, what’s your name, Sparkles?  Glow worm? Whatever, bodyguard,” Loki said, putting on his Slœgt persona, “Your  _ princess  _ is looking for you,” he sneered the word.

Topaz tossed him a mildly unhating look as she escaped Thor’s nerd-lock/chat.   

Thor gave her a little wave, “I’ll catch up with you later, then?  Yes? Topaz?” He sighed and turned back, “Yes, where is she?”

“I’ll show you.  Wouldn’t want you to get distracted heading back to the little girly,” he answered, tossing back the rest of his drink - wine, maybe, and led Thor on a long route through the crowd, out of the room, and into one of the little private alcoves for the few guests that had enough modesty to require a place to do what everyone else was doing publicly.

Thor looked around the tiny space, as if he would find Nora hiding under a fringed throw pillow or behind a lava lamp.

“Where is Princess Nora?”

“Evading En Dwi Gast’s tongue, no doubt.”

“Then why-”

Loki punched him.  

A neat, controlled, but very emphatic uppercut, taking him on the jaw and off of his feet, onto a pile of very unsavory cushions.

“What?!”  

Before he could stand, Loki put a foot on his chest, using that extra something that he was getting from the concentrated force of a year of prayers, pleading, and desperation on the part of his supplicants.

“Never kiss my wife again, Thor,” he said, leaning down on his knee with a smile.

Thor looked astonished for a moment, and the a broad, brilliant smile split his beard, “Brother!”

 

Nora wondered if all of the tentacle porn that she had seen on the internet back in the day had secretly been inspired by the Grandmaster, because the man’s hands were just everywhere!

The couch in his private chambers was bigger than some of the beds Nora had slept in, which made it impressive and hard to get off of.  Especially when wearing a long copper lame skirt that kept wanting to stick to the fabric if she moved, exposing all of her … well, everything after Loki had ripped her panties off when he had dragged her under the table earlier.

At the time that had seemed like a fine idea, because her brain hadn’t been working at all right.  Now it was just another thing she had to worry about.

The Grandmaster was fiddling with drinks for them.  Again. It was the only way she could keep distract him without making it too obvious while she tried to think of a way to get him out of the room for a few minutes.  

“Now, here, how’s this one, ah, princess?” he said, handing her a glass of something purple with orange sparkles in it.

“Um, it's just…” Nora ran her hand sensually, or maybe just slowly, she was never sure what the difference was, across the seat of the couch, “my, what … sexy?  Um, erotic fabric this is. What is it? And I’m deathly allergic to purple, sorry.”

It wasn’t not true.  The closest she had come to dying was from Thanos, after all.  

“It’s made from Roorg skin,” he said, also touching the furniture in a suggestive way, his tone a little sad.  “She was the most … fascinating giant spider I have ever met.” He waved a long finger at her, “You know she was my grand champion for … ah … fifty years a millenia or two ago.  When she died I had this made so she would always be with me. In a way.”

Nora set the drink down with a splash.  “Um, could I have some champagne? Do you have that?”  

“Princessssss … If I didn’t know better I would say you were trying to, ah, put me off.  But champagne, champagne,” he stood up and looked at his bar. “That’s from your homeworld, isn’t it?  I don’t see any, you naughty girl. But I’ll find some, and when I do…” he trailed clouds of silver as he left the room.

Kind of letting herself roll of of the spider corpse sofa, Nora pulled one of her daggers from the mini-pocket universe they were stored in.  Holding it up she turned slowly. It did nothing.

“C’mon you piece of garbage,” she hissed, tapping it a few times with her finger until it emitted a faint green and gold glow.  “Now you’re talkin’.” This time as she spun it glowed brighter as she faced a small, flat desk in the corner.

Luckily a million plus year old man, no matter how fit he was, was still an old man, and she found what she was looking for more easily than she would have thought possible.  Stabbing the dagger into the surface of the desk caused Loki’s spell to diffuse throughout it, disrupting the security measures and sucking in the information she needed.

It took a bit of effort to pull the dagger back out, but when she did the cut closed behind it.

Unwilling to get back on the couch, Nora draped herself invitingly on the floor near windows that overlooked the ongoing orgy.  This was going to be the tricky part. 

Also, she was a little concerned about the origin of the orange and red striped rug she was laying on.  

When the Grandmaster returned with a bottle and glasses she gave him a languid - or, again, slow - smile and put out her hand, “Join me, won’t you?   I do love a good view.”

“Ah.  So you like to watch,” he said, unscrolling his lanky body down next to hers.  He poured them both a glass and then arranged their bodies so she was leaning against him like a chaise.  

A chaise that was poking her in the lower back.

“I, I like all sorts of things,” Nora said, draining her glass and offering it up for more.

He kissed her instead.

A kiss from the universe’s oldest sensualist was not to sneered at.  It was a fantastic kiss. Starting with surprise and then becoming slower, investigatory, ratcheting up, measure by measure from gentle to firm to wild.  It was quite a kiss, and the always game part of Nora admired it.

But it had nothing behind it.  It was a kiss that was only meant to lead on.  It meant nothing other than an introduction to the idea of parts of his body being inside of parts of hers.  And he could have been kissing anyone. So when it ended she was panting just a little AND felt like she needed a hard scrubbing with pumice.

“Why, princess!”  The Grandmaster was panting, too, his hand fluttering to his chest like a gleefully outraged virgin.  “That was-” 

She had been kissing Loki for almost twenty years.  She could kiss for Midgard in the Nine Realms Sexual Olympics - which she had been horrified to discover were a real thing.  Thankfully they only took place every four hundred years.

He leaned in and she let him kiss on her again.  This time she put something a little extra in it.

Namely the rune that Loki had painstakingly taught her to trace with her tongue some years ago.

This time when they broke apart the Grandmaster’s eyes were ever so slightly glazed.  “Pour me another glass.”

He did it without question.  

“Finish your own drink.”  

He did that, too.

Loki had told her on someone as powerful and ancient as the Grandmaster the rune would probably only work for ten minutes, but would last longer if she played to his natural inclinations and vanities.

“Um, how about a song?” she said, draining her champagne.

“A song?”

“Yeah, I would love to sing something for you, En…” God she hoped that was actually what she should call him.  Fuck it she was going to have to really sell this, so she leaned against him, a hand on his surprisingly, almost distractingly nice chest, “I normally only sing for my husband.  Otherwise I hate to perform,” she lied, “but something about you inspires me.“ She sat back, looking down and trying to remember how to seem shy, “I hope it’s not too forward of me, especially as I know you are quite the talented musician yourself.”

“Why, princess!  That would be such a treat.  I’m flattered. I. Am. Flattered.” He reached out and took one of her hands, kissing her fingers while meeting her eyes,  “You know, do I fancy myself to be a bit of a musician. Maybe we could, ah, collaborate. Some time.” He did something with his eyebrows, and made a gesture with his free hand.

“Um, yes, that would be something we could do.  Yup.”

“Do you need accompaniment?  I have, if I do say so myself, quite the band.  I had them kidnapped myself.”

“What?”

“They can play anything.”

Nora was surprised to find out that not only was that true, but that at least two of the players - the hot British, bassist with the big boots and the gum chewing addiction, and the Japanese drummer, were from earth.  “I’ve had waaayyy worse gigs, believe me,” the bassist said, her Mancunian accent touched with a Sakaaran slur.

She looked at their playbook.  It was the size of the New York phonebook (back when they existed) in a two point font.  On page 9785 she found what she needed. “Son of a bitch, you guys really do know every song.”

The whole band shrugged with bored immodesty.  Even the keyboardist who didn’t actually have shoulders.

Now she just hoped the rest of her party would be listening.

 

Loki had just let Thor up, and was about to allow the golden ox embrace him when he heard the Grandmaster ostentatiously clear his throat for an announcement.

“Ah, my darlings, my cherubs, not to interrupt your chosen, ah, festivities, but our very most special guest, the lovely and very, heheh, elusive Princess Nora is going to sing for us.  So everyone stop what you’re doing. Stop. It’ll be there when she’s done, and lend an ear.” 

Loki darted out of the room.  The holograph of the Grandmaster that had been leering down at everyone turned into one of Nora, who he could also just barely make out on the dias where the band was set up on the far end of the room.  He leaned on the door, smiling. It had been too long…

“Right, um, sorry to song-block everyone, but sometimes you just gotta sing.  This goes out to all of my friends, near and far. So, uh, hit it? I guess?”

Un, deux, trois   
Hey!   
  
We're in trouble, so   
We move on the double   
We move on the double   
We move, yeah   
We're in trouble, so   
We move on the double   
We move on the double   
We move, yeah   
  
Quick sand, no plan   
Hollywood, La La Land   
Pick me up on Sunset and Vine   
San Diego city limits   
We can't waste another minute   
Take the PCH for a ride   
Outta gas, pedal fast   
Hit the boardwalk, don't look back   
  
Get away   
Get away   
Get away   
Get away   
  
We're in trouble, so   
We move on the double   
We move on the double   
We move, yeah   
We're in trouble, so   
We move on the double   
We move on the double   
We move, yeah   
  
Love to stay, tons of fun   
Thanks for nothing, gotta run   
On the double we move   
  
Jet plane flying high   
Country sway, wave goodbye   
Monte Carlo should be nice   
Comment allez-vous?   
I'm alright, how are you?   
Maybe we could learn a thing or two   
All my gyros down the drain   
Lost my shoe, hopped the train   
  
Get away   
Get away   
Get away   
Get away   
We're in trouble, so   
We move on the double   
We move on the double   
We move, yeah   
We're in trouble, so   
We move on the double   
We move on the double   
We move, yeah   
  
Love to stay, tons of fun   
Thanks for nothing, gotta run   
On the double we move   
  
Get back   
Get back   
Get back   
Get back   
  
We're in trouble, so   
We move on the double   
We move on the double   
We move, yeah   
We're in trouble, so   
We move on the double   
We move on the double   
We move, yeah

Loki turned to look at his brother, who was dividing his longing gaze between Topaz and Sif with her new friend.  He slapped him on the bare arm. Hard.

“Ow.”

“That song is Nora’s signal.  We have to go. Gather your … posse.  We need to find somewhere private to confer.”

 

Sif and the Warriors Three looked equally confused.  Only Sif’s new friend the Scrapper seemed unconcerned.  She finished her intergalactic 40oz. and pulled another one from under the couch.  Her room was spare of everything but booze. 

Apparently she was Asgardian, too.  A Valkyrie, who were some kind of super badass fighter types that had been wiped out by Thor and Loki’s older sister, Hela.  She had managed to survive - and clearly did not want to talk about it, proving she was definitely Asgardian because they never wanted to talk about aaannnnyyything.  

Which was also how you could tell that Loki was adop-

Wait?

“Sister?” she turned on the couch and looked at her husband who was currently digging her enchanted dagger into his side to remove the obedience disk that the Grandmaster had inserted there.  He was still in his Jotunn form because they bled less and didn’t feel pain as strongly.

Which was probably also why Thor and everyone else were staring at him with uncertainty.

“That is a story for another day, my love,” he said with a grunt, pulling out the disc and smashing it with the dagger’s hilt.  The spell that had absorbed the all of the Grandmaster’s secret codes, the technology that powered the obedience discs, and any other little bits of knowledge that Loki might find interesting allowed him to destroy it without sounding any alarms.

He then used a bit of seidr to clean up the blue blood and slipped back into his Asgardian form.  

And clothing.

Nora was going to miss that loincloth.  

And the horns.

“Do you mind?” she asked, pointing to her own hideously garish dress.

With a gentle glow it turned into a black sweater and jeans, and her beloved hiking boots.  Then Loki wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her to him. “You smell like the Grandmaster’s cologne.”

“Tough,” she said, nuzzling against his jaw while he laughed.

“Um...”  

Right.

“So,” Loki said, “now all we have to do is sneak out of the main part of the … er … city.  Charles can’t land the ship here, it’s too large, but we can commander a smaller one easily enough to get us up to her, and then through the Devil’s Anus - yes, Volstagg, I said anus, quite amusing - and then we can be off.  Or Nora and I can be. You can all feel free to just call Heimdall. Thank you all for coming,” he added with a dismissive wave.

The various members of their party - other than the Scrapper, who seemed to find the whole situation hilarious - were outraged at their dismissal.  

“Um … actually we aren’t going yet,” Nora said quietly under the anger.

Everyone heard her anyway.  

“What?” Loki said, looking genuinely surprised.

“I said we aren’t going yet.  At least, I’m not.”

“And why would that be, treasure?” Loki asked, his eyes narrowing.  “Have you taken a fondness for our host by-”

“No.  Shut up.”  She pushed away from him.  “I decided that I want to try and free the rest of the gladiators, too.  They’re slaves, right? And most of the rest of them probably have someone, somewhere who’s looking for them.”

“Probably enemies,” Loki muttered.  

“So,” she talked over him, “since we have all of this information I thought we should just, you know, take them with us.”

Now the outrage had a different target.  This time even with the Scrapper getting involved.

“Listen,” Nora said, standing up, “I know that it's probably going to be difficult and dangerous, but you do that kind of thing all of the time.  And they are SLAVES! That’s a bad thing, right? And you’re all supposed to be good guys so it behooves you … to … to be good.”

Loki snorted, “That hardly applies to me, treasure.  So what is to keep me from tossing you over my shoulder and leaving this ashcan of a world right now?  I would be happy to risk your ire for the sake of your safety.”

Nora thought about it for a moment, “Remember that thing we did for our fifth anniversary that I wasn’t sure I liked?  I’d give it another shot.”

“Then freedom for the enslaved masses it shall be.  And,” now he stood up and slapped Thor on the shoulder, “since King Papa sent my brother, Et. al to aid you in my recovery, they cannot depart without me.  It will be such fun.”

For once, having a moment to think about it, Thor, the Warriors Three, and Sif all agreed with Loki.

Scrapper 142 snorted into her bottle.  

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Nora sings is Double Trouble by Jack and White  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk8P1oIBfWU


	9. The First Plan Never Works.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The title says it all.

It took them three hours to come up with a plan that they could all agree on.  

As with all great plans it was simplicity itself.

By using the Scrapper and Slœgt’s connection in the Grandmaster’s Palace they would get word to the slave quarters to be ready for the obedience disks to be deactivated long enough for them to be removed.  Once they were able to leave their prison they could use the disks on any guards that had enough exposed, organic parts for them to be incapacitated by them. 

They would have to fight everyone else, making their way to the Grandmaster’s ‘garage,’ as Nora kept calling it,  where they would have to steal ships to get off planet. The security codes would have been changed to something simple to remember.  

12151191920251920, which Loki had come up with off the cuff.

So all their team would have to do is sneak into the palace, fight any guards, change those security codes, make sure that there were enough ships to get all of the slaves off of the planet.  Any that did not fit in the Grandmaster’s armada would join them fighting their way to the roof of the palace - which was fortunately only a few stories above the dock - where Charles and Loki’s darling  _ Naglikjóll _ , who he missed dreadfully, would retrieve them.

Then they could all sip cocktails and make awkward small talk all of the way back to Asgard, where Loki would quickly deposit everyone that wasn’t Nora (or Charles) and hopefully be gone before Odin’s ravens had a chance to play narc.  Then he and his treasure could return to their hideously interrupted life of debauchery, adventure, and reading. With breaks for cookies.

 

On the planet known to its inhabitants as ‘land’ and was known to the members of Nova Corps that had mapped it but not actually landed on it as Occurian 7, a young female found herself awake during the sleeping time, and quietly left the bed she shared with her siblings to stare at the light pouring down from the four moons.  

The Elders feared them, but she thought they were beautiful and their light was kind and lovely.  At their wanings and waxings offerings were always left for each. Flowers and dead spiders for the blue one.  Dolls shaped like cats for the red one. Grain and bones for the closer white one, fruit and stones for its distant twin.  

And she wondered why.  No one knew. 

She wondered what their names were.  No one had ever given them names. Not them, and not the earth beneath her feet.

It seemed lonely not to have a name. 

So she named them. 

The next morning she picked up her little sister and told her about the moons and the earth.

The Blue one that liked flowers was Coror the Blooming.  The Red one that liked cats and toys was Eria the Playful.  The Twins were Fe and De. And the world was Tokale.

Thus was Tokale’s first myth told by her first storyteller.

 

On earth, Donnie Montrose was in trouble.

Big, motherfucking trouble.

It was kind of a joke, he thought.  Big Monte. Big trouble. But he didn’t laugh.

Sure he knew ahead of time that he shouldn’t have been dating Big Monte’s ex-wife.  And that the shipment they were boosting was not actually cigarettes but was actually cigarettes AND a tracking device connected to the F.B. cocksucking I.  And that the Feds were going to leave him swinging if the shit went sideways.

Shit went goddamned sideways.  And Donnie stepped right into it in his polished fucking loafers.

“You got words before he starts on you?” Monte asked, arms crossed, as his button man, the Cardinal, pulled out a wrench, needle-nose pliers, and one of those little blow-torches that you make the topping on a creme brulee with.

Big Monte loved creme brulee. 

Donnie thought.  Tried to think of just the right words, just the right lie, to get him out of this.  

Then it hit him, exactly what he should say and how he should say it to save himself.

It was so fucking perfect he had to stop himself from smiling as he nodded, all solemn and fucking respectful, so respectful he even said, “With respect, sir, let me tell you the story of how this shit got fucked.”

By dinner time Donnie was eating Chinese with Big Monte’s ex, had a call into the Feds, and a roll of hundreds in his pocket.  

 

Additionally, in the days and nights immediately following the restoration of the God of Mischief and Lies, throughout the Nine Realms there were:

7,654,875,742,028 little white lies were told that harmed no one, some of them even doing some good.

464,751,521 black untruths infected lives with unhappiness.

92,785,325,150 children learned that if they made something up they could keep from getting in trouble, for the moment.

12,520,782 novels were really, actually, finally started.

None were quite finished.

Close.  But not quite

Tom Hiddleston finally won that long overdue Oscar, for his role as Alan Swann in the remake of My Favorite Year.

21,951,328,152,152,545,047 creatures decided to try and breaking into politics, film, theatre, interpretive dance, the law (as in lawyers, not cops), folk music, ballet, opera, the pants of someone they thought they didn’t stand a chance with, advertising, the grift, professional gambling, meteorology, real estate, the clergy  - both established religions as well as a few trying to found their own, quack medicine, cooking, baking, selling timeshares, payday loans, bartending, and, for no reason, just by some peculiar coincidence, tuckpointing.

87,975,789 songs were written.  

47 were good.

289,651,784,789,789,789 parties were thrown.  Good times were had by all.

No one had an accurate count on orgasms.  But the numbers were very encouraging all around.

The Nine Realms were having a pretty good week.

Sadly, Sakaar was outside of the Nine Realms.  

 

The plan didn’t work.  

Nora wasn’t surprised.  

The first plan never worked.

She even said that as they stood there, she said it to Loki.  “Why do we even bother with a first plan? Huh? Because has one of them ever worked?  Why don’t we always just start with the second plan. Or, no, the third. Let’s start with the third plan from now on.  Have you EVER had a first plan work, even before we met?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes, blowing a bit of hair from off of his brow, but he didn’t come up with a first time plan that had worked because she was right, damn it.

Not because theirs had been a bad plan by any stretch.  It was a fine plan, combining Loki’s guile and gift for strategy with the intelligence and security information she had stolen from the Grandmaster, Thor’s power and experience with tactics, the insider knowledge of their new friend the Scrapper, and the combined might and skills of Sif and the Warriors Three.  

The first part of it actually worked.  Pretty much. The majority of the slaves had gotten free of the planet, with various ships darting through the different wormholes that ranged over the sky of Onemanstrashisanothermanstreasuregard.  Even the casualty situation was pretty good news. 

The few slaves that hadn’t made it onto the ships, or decided to take their chances with the cannibals on and other creatures that lived in the city below them or in the trash heaps, were among the better fighters and so were an asset for their ascent to the roof of the palace.

And yet, here she stood, the Grandmaster’s Big Gold Melt Stick pointed at her, a ring of guards around the perimeter of the party room, Thor writhing and moaning on the floor in agony from the Obedience Disk on the back of his neck, the Warriors Three variously, unconscious in a pile of guards - Hogan;  running down the hallway, being chased by three of those tall guard-things with the rainbow fur - Fandral. 

And Volstagg was trapped in what appeared to be sentient, psychedelically coloured  version of a snuggy. He hadn’t given up the fight, but periodically he slowed down as if being lured into cuddling with it for a few moments and then seemed to remember what he was supposed to be doing and started to struggle again.

When last seen Sif and the Scrapper (Scif?  The Siffer? Nora was still trying to figure out their couple name) were back to back, swords drawn, fighting off a group of those armored guard-things that might have been robots, that were led by Topaz.  The Top Thug really seemed to have it in for the former Valkyrie, and was probably going to be in trouble with the Grandmaster for chasing her rather than staying at his side. 

Loki was negotiating.

“Now, En, do you mind if I call you En?” he sauntered slowly forward, hands gracefully spread, palms forward to show his hands were empty and his intent peaceful.

He had made himself a new set of armor for the occasion, with a short, more padded tunic and less gold and leather tooling.  Nora thought it seemed kind of dull, but his ass looked great in it as long as he skipped the cape, so she took it as a lose/win.

“Eh, eh, that’s close enough there, handsome,” the Grandmaster said, moving the stick incrementally closer to Nora.  “I think that calling me by my first name is a little chummy for someone I’ve never met before who tried to liberate my content and well cared for sla-, prisoners with jo-, with a purpose.  Prisoners with a Purpose. Hey, that’s pretty good. I might have shirts made for them.”

“Now, is that kind?  After all we’ve been to each other?” Loki said, verbally batting his lashes, very slowly shapeshifting into Slœgt.

Nora saw a little blood gleaming on the tips of his horns, jerking her hands to her mouth and taking a step forward, “Oh, Jesus!  Does that hurt? Are you hurt? Is the bleeding going to stop on it’s own? I need a towel.” She looked around wildly for something to clean her husband up with, then noticed the Grandmaster, still holding the Scepter of All Melting close to her side, though he was staring in shock at Loki.  

“You have thick hair, that’ll be fine, I’m sure …” she trailed off.

“That is… That is…” the Grandmaster’s face seemed to almost split in half to accommodate his toothy smile of joy, “magnificent!  I mean, really, just when I think I know how splendid you are, my beloved champion, you, you…” he gestured with his hand, helpless to come up with a superlative, “you find another way to amaze me.  Imagine the bouts we can have with you. Is he a Jotunn? Is he a … whatever you are now? How will he fight? Pure brutality and whooshhhhh! The wailing winds of winter? Or … whatever can you do like that.  I’m sure it’s truly horrible. Is it?”

En Dwi Gast had managed to distract himself enough with the fantasies of carnage and entertainment he was spinning in his head, that Nora took the moment to duck backwards, sidestepping quickly behind him, pressing her booted toe on the back of his sandal as she went.  

The Grandmaster was forced to spin around, trying to track her.

The foot holding his shoe and copper lamé robe getting in the way made him stumble just enough that she could sprint the few feet over to Loki. 

With a viperous frown and narrowed eyes he stepped in front of her, “Too risky, Nora.  Too risky.”

“Well, the view was better from over there, but I didn’t like the company.”

“Ah, you’re quicker than you look, princess,” the Grandmaster said, waving his pointer finger at her, “Tsk, tsk, and to think of the hospitality I showed you.  The pleasure I wanted to shower upon you. But all while you were scheming, yes, scheming with Sparkles here,” he gestured to the writhing Thor, “to steal my beautiful champion.”

“I really wanted a shower when I was with you, now that you mention it,” Nora said from behind Loki.  She kept trying to lean around him to talk and he kept blocking her, not even wanting the Grandmaster to be able to look at her.  “And I can’t steal what already belongs to me!”

Loki turned at the waist to look at her, frowning.

“Am I wrong?”

“No, I just find myself thrilled at your possessiveness, which is inappropriate and distracting in the situation.”

“Sorry.”  She was not sorry.  

“So, this is your prince?”  As if it was possible for En Dwi Gast to be more delighted then he was.  “Oh, oh! I feel like writing a song! Royal lovers reunited, and I have them as part of my little … stable!  Where’s my keyboard? Topaz? Where’s my Topaz for that matter?”

Nora started to ask if stable was a horse crack but Loki spoke over her, knowing where her head had gone.

“She was fighting Sif and a Valkyrie, so I would hazard a guess that she’s dead.  Such a pity, she was such a charming woman.”

Thor made a sound of thwarted romance beneath the sounds of physical anguish he had been making.  He really had it bad for Topaz, Nora thought ruefully. The poor guy had no luck when it came to women.

“If you think we’re going to stay here, you’ve got another think coming, En,” Nora said, putting her hands on Loki’s shoulders so she could jump up to see the Grandmaster.    

“Nora, can I call  _ you _ Nora?  Nora, your highness, I am sure that even if your cute friend and my Scrapper did kill Topaz, she took at least one of them with her.  And the rest of your … gang,” he waggled his head with a smile at that, “are pretty useless right now.” He stepped over Thor, Melty Bat raised, “And I am guessing from the way that my champion is looking at you there isn’t very much he wouldn’t do to protect you.”

“Nothing, actually,” Loki said.

“And I am guessing, and correct me if I’m wrong, you feel the same.”

“I have an active morality, so there are probably lots of things I couldn’t make myself to, but I  _ would _ die to protect him.”

“See?  Beautiful.  Truly. There is nothing he wouldn’t do to protect you.  You’d die for him. That’s … that’s love alright. I’ve never experienced it, but it’s so inspiring!  What a song that will be. You should sing it, princess. It will be the centerpoint event to my next little soiree.  Thank you,” he tucked the Meltinator into the crook of his arm to applaud them softly.

Which was when Thor sat up, plucked the Obedience Disk from his neck, and blasted the Grandmaster with all of the energy he had absorbed from it.  

At the same moment, Loki produced a ball of green flame that turned into a lash that he whipped out, as it grew, coiling around the neck of one guard and passing like wildfire into the next and the next and the next before any of them could react.  When all of them were leashed a jerk of his wrist snapped all of their necks in one, deafening crack.

The force of Thor’s power caused En Dwi Gast’s body to erupt through the wall of his palace, his shiny limbs wheeling in the air as he tried to catch himself on nothingness.  

They were very high up and the scream was impressive. 

And long.

“Sadly, he’ll most likely survive.  One does not live to be one of the oldest creatures in the universe if a mere fall from one hundred stories will kill you.”

Thor went to look out of the hole in the wall, stretching a bit, “I would think that one would not live that long without realizing that electricity would not be a good weapon against the God of Thunder,” as he leaned out he whistled and they could hear Mjolnir bursting through several walls as it raced to reach him from where he had left it aiding Sif and the Valkyrie.  “Looks like he might have landed on that liquefying object of his.”

Loki casually slung an arm around Nora’s shoulder, kissing her on the temple, “THAT may take him a bit longer to recover from.  Treasure, might you try to wake Hogun? Thor, perhaps check on Fandral? I’ll deal with Volstagg and the murder blanket. I believe Charles has arrived and I am eager to be on my way.”

“You’re eager to see your girlfriend,” Nora laughed.  “Don’t worry, I took good care of your little girl for you, daddy,” she added with an aggravated tone.

“While I know you are only making a joke, sister, please, never say that to him in my presence again,” Thor begged before leaving the room.

Nora and Loki shared a look.

Thor really shouldn’t have said that.

 

That night, Loki woke alone.

Nora’s side of the bed was still warm.  

“ _ Naglikjóll _ ?”

“Yes, sir?” His ship’s voice, which was Nora’s voice with an Asgardian accent and a little bit less irony, purred to him.

“Where is Nora?”  He asked, thinking maybe she had gone to check on their guests.  It was unusual for them to have anyone on the ship with them and maybe she was worried about the hospitality.

Where as he hoped everyone was very uncomfortable and would want to depart quickly.

“The mistress is currently walking through the corridors on Level Three.”

Loki frowned, standing up and slipping on a pair of trousers and a linen tunic.  Level Three was unfinished. There was nothing to see there or do there. At some point he was considering a garden.

Or maybe a casino.  He could not make up his mind.

When he reached Level Three it took him a few minutes to find Nora.  He heard a door open and followed the sound.

“Nora?”  She was in one of the empty rooms, wandering about it, naked and clearly asleep.  Her face was drawn. 

She was looking for something.

He started forward, his heart pounding and his mouth dry.  For the first time he saw the years on her, and that there were more behind her than there would be to come.

“I would not wake her, master,” Charles said, appearing behind him, holding a spidersilk robe which he gently dropped on her shoulders as she walked past them, unseeing, back into the hallway.  “I did so once and she was terribly disoriented and frightened.”

They followed her into the cold, dusty hall, her feet sliding almost on the metal floors.  “Her feet must be so cold,” Loki said. “How long?”

“She’s been looking for you since she woke on Asgard.  Even on Sakaar. Sometimes she wakes herself up, falling on her way out of bed, sometimes she wanders for hours.”

Loki nodded.  Walking close to her, he whispered with magic on his breath,  _ “Ég er heima, fjársjóður, sofa núna.” _

Her body sagged with relief, falling into his arms so he could carry her back to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Ragnarok did it make sense to ANYONE that what seemed to be electric shock would have any effect on Thor? Me, either.


	10. Hi Dad, We’re Home!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Brothers Odinson show Nora the sights of Asgard.

Most of those who came to Asgard were either by invitation, in which case they came across the Bifrost, or those attempting to invade - or blow up - the Realm Eternal, so there was not a dock as such.  

In lieu of one, Charles carefully parked  _ Naglikjóll  _ beside the bridge that led from the Bifrost entrance to the city.  

Even though Heimdall had informed the AllFather that the ship carried his heir and his … Loki, or maybe because of it, or because of the bakers dozen of armed and miscellaneous ex-gladiators that were travelling with them, or because Nora had been sassy to the King last time she was there, they were met by an armed contingent of Einherjar led by some thick fellow named Skurge, who looked vaguely familiar.  His handsome face marred by very unsound facial hair and markings on his head that may have been tribal or cult related but were certainly NOT fashionable.

Loki and Thor stood at the ramp, looking at the guards.  “After you, brother,” Loki said with a sweeping hand motion.

“As the captain of this ship, I believe you should go first, brother,” Thor said mimicking the gesture and adding a little  _ oomph  _ to it.

Neither of them especially felt like facing their father.

Just like old times, Loki thought.  

They stood facing each other for a minute.  Then two. The Einherjar all waited in perfect silence and stillness, none of them wanting to be facing their princes, but they were under orders so there was nothing  _ they  _ could do about it.

“Ok, let’s get this show on the road,” Nora came up behind them, pulling the cuff of her Oxford shirt from under her sweater sleeve.  She had dressed herself in what Loki considered her plainest, Midgardian-Midwestern drag, a navy sweater over a white shirt, jeans, and her hiking boots.  Her wedding necklaces, which she usually only wore when dressed up, were especially sparkling and bright against the soft blue cashmere. 

She started to walked between them down the ramp, stopping abruptly.  “Woah, lots of guards. Are we under arrest already?” she asked as she waved to the soldiers with a smile and head tilt.  “And do they have coffee in the jail? Dungeon? Whichever. ‘Cause I’m wiped.”

Loki glared affectionately down at her, putting a knuckle beneath her chin and lifting it so he could see her face.  The deep circles beneath her eyes were still like bruises, and her mouth was pale and dry. “I left you sleeping for a reason.  This whole ordeal has taxed your strength.”

“I woke up anyway.  I’m fine. Let’s go see dad.”

Loki and Thor twitched in unison at that.  She snorted at them and started down the ramp.  With a few long strides they caught up, flanking her and looking haughty.  

They might both be in disgrace but they still were princes.

“I was only supposed to bring the two of you,” Skurge said to Loki and Thor over Nora’s head, “not your mortal.”  And then, realizing who he was talking to, “Yer, er, um,” Kurse looked at all three of them, clearly not certain how to greet them.

“Try ‘Highnesses,’” Loki suggested.  “It should not be too hard to pronounce, even for someone foolish as to think to speak to my wife and I in such a manner.”

Thor grumbled, and there was an increase in ozone in the air.  The Einherjar stirred a bit nervously.

Nora elbowed Loki in the stomach, “Rude.  We’ve talked about this.”

“I promised to be polite to those who are offering me a service.  Are we really considering ‘escorting us to prison’ a service these days?”

“Happens often enough that maybe we should?  Beside which, it’s not his fault. It’s not your fault.  I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice man,” Nora said placatingly to Skurge.  “We don’t  _ know _ we’re going to prison.  Just because we  _ do _ end up there a lot.  Thor probably doesn’t, so maybe we won’t.  Are we going to prison, leader-guy?” she asked.

“I am sorry that they sent no horses, sister,” Thor said, “it is no little walk to the palace from this place and I would not have you exhaust yourself.”

“Would you two shut it already?  I’m not decrepit or made of glass, I’m just fifty and need a full body massage and another couple nights’ sleep.  And I can’t ride a horse. That would probably kill me.”

Loki mentally added, “Teach Nora to ride,” to his ‘to do’ list.  

“Could we, um, just-,” Skurge clearly did not want this conversation to continue, since they were probably already expected at the palace.  Indeed, he looked as if he would be quite happy if they and he were to never speak again.

Nora offered Loki her arm, which he took, giving Skurge a regal nod, choosing to treat the situation like a royal progress rather than the Asgardian equivalent of a perp walk.  Thor followed behind them after motioning for Sif, who had just wandered up to the deck, looking very well … rested after her night with the Valkyrie. 

As they walked towards the city, the brothers pointed out locations of interest to Nora.  Loki made certain she noted the very recently finished restorations the massively tall statue of their grandfather Bor, which needed to be restored due to Thor’s terrible piloting when they were escaping the Realm with the Aether. 

And Jane Foster.

Then Thor brought her attention to a spired building not far from the entrance to the bridge.  Once there had lived there a family whose eldest son was a young man of surpassing beauty who Loki had developed a crush on when he about two hundred - or thirteenish -  and just discovering love. 

Loki, who was rather small at that time and not yet a dedicated fighter, decided to win the heart and other bodily parts of his would-be paramour, by showing off his magic rather than trying to impress him with feats of strength and martial prowess like the other boys and girls were.  So one moonlit night he memorized a famous love poem, turned himself into  _ hleapewince _ , which was a little bird with iridescent green wings and a flew up to the top room of the spire where the older boy lived.

“Let me guess, wrong room?” Nora asked her husband.

“No,” he answered shortly, “he w-”

Thor jumped back in, “He was not alone.  Very not alone. He was sharing his bed with one of his father’s huscarls, the huscarl’s wife, and a horsetrader from Vanaheim.  Loki was so heart-broken  _ and _ inflamed at the erotic sight that he forgot how to turn back into himself.  The born shapeshifter  _ forgot _ !  For a week he circled our mother’s head chirping and complaining until she figured out the proper spell to restore him!”

“Treasure,” Loki whispered to in his wife’s ear, pleased to see her shiver a bit at the touch of his breath, “note you the small, violet structure over there?  It is a tavern. And a very famous one at that. For it is the one tavern, nay, the one structure on all of Asgard where the Mighty Thor, prince and protector of the Realm, is not only unwelcome, but has been banned for life, for conduct so unbecoming a member of the royal family I will not soil your delicate ears with it. 

“But I will say it involved a goat.

“And the innkeeper’s very pretty sister.

“Sadly, for months afterwards he would show up, hoping to make amends to these poor, honest people, and sadly each attempt just made matters for worse.  For some  _ unknown _ , and certainly  _ unknowable _ , reason.

“And that the fire was not  _ sooooo  _ bad.

“Nor the subsequent flooding caused by certain young god’s over enthusiastic calling of a rainstorm in an attempt to deal with the fire that he has started in the first place.

“The owners even went to so far as to hire a sorcerer, a Master of Magics, if you will,” he said, touching his chest and bowing to her a bit, “to ensure he cannot enter.  Every time he has tried, he finds himself suddenly teleported to a point in the air over the Rathforn Slough - a foul, cold pond covered in stinking algae and just filled with snapping turtles.  

“Each time he does another ten feet is added to his drop in to the water.  How far was it the last time, brother?”

“Mumblemumble”

“What was that, Thor?  I think Nora did not hear you.”

“One hundred and twenty feet, as you well know!”

“I heard the splash all of the way at the palace,” he confided in his wife.

“Unknown and unknowable, huh?” she said, eyebrow raised in an excellent burlesque of his own looking of knowing incredulity.  

Thor, unwilling to let that be the last bit of coup counted between them, took Nora’s other arm, and pointed to the bridge beneath their feet, “Sister, see you this spot of bridge, so like the rest, but yet not so?”

“Yes?”

“It was on this very spot that I pinned Loki with Mjolnir for the first time.  I remember it as it were yesterday. He was attempting to destroy Jotunheim and had very nearly succeeded, but I -”

Loki stopped, frowning at his brother. The Einherjar kept walking for a few paces and then all stopped, neatly  walking backwards to bracket the royals again. “Are you, in fact, telling my wife the story that ends with, ‘and then Loki attempted to end his sad and betrayed existence by allowing himself to fall into the void, where, rather than the sweet release of death, he was found by Thanos and tortured and twisted into being his slave’?”

“Ah, I had, um, that is I had-”  Thor looked sheepishly at his boots.  

“You forgot that part, did you?” Loki snapped.

“NO!  I just, maybe, forgot it was the same story.  We have fought rather a lot of times, brother…” he trailed off, blushing.

“It was not the sort of thing I would expect to be so easily forgotten,” Loki murmured. 

With perhaps the slightest hitch to his voice.

Nora quickly wrapped her arms around him, kissing his cheek and burying her face on his chest, “Damn it, Thor,” she said as she did, “I thought you were better than that.”

Loki, pleased at the expected result and therefore victory in this little contest of shame, smirked at his brother over her head, and gave him a universally known gesture with one of his fingers, signifying said victory. 

Thor had no answer, which was probably wise.

Eventually they were off of the seemingly endless bridge and were walking through the city.  The citizens of Asgard were so used to drama and kerfuffle with the Allfather’s family that they barely seemed to notice the armed guards, the handsome princes, or the was-she-or-wasn’t-she princess walking through the streets, other than the required bowing.

Which was making Nora uncomfortable, so Loki distracted her with more stories.  

About the small park where he liked to go by himself, disguised as a commoner, to sit and practice shapeshifting, seeing if he could fool people into thinking he was their friend, their child, their father or mother.  Their faithful hound or aloof feline companion.

About the larger tavern - where Thor was still welcome thankfully - where was played a game of knucklebones that legend claimed had been going on for over three thousand years, with generations of sons and daughters taking their parents places as the game went on.  At stake was a treasure whose actual nature had been lost to the centuries, but was said to be unique in all of the Realms, even those beyond the Nine. 

About the playhouse where he was patron - and from time to time had a work of his produced under a pseudonym.  

About the bookstores and suppliers of eldritch tools and ingredient.  About the pastries that were made by an ancient fairy, one of the last his kind, that were crisp as autumn and tasted like sunlight or starlight, and depending on which you purchased, gave you vivid dreams of romance or debauchery.  About the street of temples to gods other than the Aesir. About the house he found one day in his wandering where each room was a different season, but not the mere four that most worlds knew of, but twelve, each with a nature and a name, but ones that he could never recall upon leaving, no matter how often he visited or how elaborate the notes he made.

Thor told her about the forests to the west, where they had hunted in the wilds, chasing trolls that had fallen through gaps between their world and this one, each more hideous and fascinating than the last.  About the ocean that spilled into the firmament, where he had once caught a great leviathan that swam through the universe, but had been caught in the currents of space and could not free itself from Asgard. With Loki’s help, he netted it and they traveled to the edge of the Realms, where the Bifrost simply ended and cut the net so it dropped into the whirlpools of nebulas and the wakes left by comets, to swim free again.

About the royal stables - about his chariot drawn by goats, about their cousin Freya’s cats who lounged on the rafters and teased the horses, save Sleipnir, who they were wise enough to fear.  

Nora raised an eyebrow at Loki.

He chose not to speak.  It was a novel feeling, but one he would not care to repeat.

Rather like giving birth.

The castle looked especially golden that morning.  The great gate was a like the mouth of a sleeping giant that yawned and then swallowed them whole.

 

An hour later…

Thor had gone back to the ship to fetch Sif and the Warriors Three.  

True to his pronouncement, no guards waited for Loki and Nora as they left his presence.  Both of them feeling bit shocky, and not having anywhere else private he could think of, Loki took them to his chambers and without thought led them to the largest room rather than the cosiest, which would have been the better choice.

But he was not thinking so clearly just then.

“They must have dusted.  They must have expected you to come back,” Nora said, dropping into the only chair in his faux throne-room that was not the throne.  One that he remembered pulling into the chamber decades before, so he could read by the moonlight that flooded space and reflected off the mirror polished floor. 

“Hmmm….” he mused, looking about him.  Had he really possessed so little imagination in his youth that he had simply recreated the Allfather’s throne-room exactly, if in miniature?  With no improvements? None of his own aesthetic? Had he really thought that he could somehow make himself into just another Aesir god-king, and that it would satisfy him?

Nora had been speaking for a while, but he has distracted himself.

“- before, when they healed me, I met Thor in here and the rooms were covered in dust, so I am guessing that Odin was expecting you back. It was nice to see your priests again.  They looked good, it had to have been pretty nerve wracking for them not to know where their god was. And I think you’re dad is starting to like me a little. He actually mentioned me in his plans for your future, and he called me “Laura” once.  Close enough. He probably just figures you’re going to get bored with me soon enough anyway that it doesn’t matter. Are you staying?”

What?

“What?”

She was staring out of the massive windows, at the ageless beauty of his home. Her voice was vague and dreamy.  No, not dreamy, but stunned. “I understand if you want to. I mean, it’s what you’ve always wanted. Your dream.  And you’ll be a good king, a really good king. Probably. I don’t know what it means to be a good king or a bad king, but you’re the smartest person I know and you’ve studied for the role all of your life and now you can have it, or at least you get to be the main understudy now.”  She looked at him, her eyes not quite focused, “You’ll be a good king.”

A flash of heat and rage spread through Loki.  So he climbed up the dias to his mock-throne and took a seat, lounging backwards, legs aggressively spread, speaking with a hiss.  “Thor once told me the throne would suit me ill. Do you not agree, wife?” 

“No, I don’t.  I think you can do anything.”

Why did that affirmation make him even angrier?

“So you would bid me stay, and take a queen?   Then what of you?”

Nora stood and wandered around the room, not unlike when he had found her the night before.  Even her eyes did not seem to see more than they had, “Oh, I imagine it’ll be like your dad said.  If you become king you can give me an apple, and I can be your concubine or whatever. Maitresse d’Titre.  Side piece. What do they call them here? Anyway, you can eat your cake and have it too.”

It was gutting to think that after what was for her so long and for him just a day, that Nora could think that he would subject her to the scorn of anyone just to sate his desire for acclaim.

“Is that truly what you think I wish?  Is it what you would wish, to be young again?  Stronger and healthier than ever you’ve been, not at my side but in my bed? “

She finally looked him in the eyes, her smile weary but sweet, “No.  No, I don’t. But you did want it for hundreds of years, so I think you should at least think about it for a while before telling dad to go fuck himself.  I don’t want you to look at me in ten years, when I’m sixty and telling you that you need to find me some better sources of fibre, and regret not taking your chance.  I wouldn’t mind being stronger and healthier and younger, but not if it means seeing you with someone else by your side. I suppose I could keep the ship, keep Charles, and go.  Come back and visit you from time to time…”

He stood and walked down to her, touching her face, her hair, her neck, staring into her sweet eyes, sighing at the warmth and the scent of her, “Then it would be _ I  _ who wandered my nights away, searching for my lost princess.  No, I sleep too little as it is to give up what I have, I would be worn away with exhaustion in scant decades.  We shall have to stay together, for my health’s sake.”

“If you’re sure?” she asked, serious again for the moment.

“Never surer.”

“Then how do we get out of here?  Because I don’t think that dad is going to take no for an answer this time.  And I can’t blame the guy. Everyone wants to retire eventua-”

He kissed her, not wishing to hear more about his father from her lovely lips than he had to. 

When he let her go, her eyes stayed closed and her lips parted for a  few moments, and he gazed at her, smiling at her unconscious sigh. Sometimes from within his pretty, witty sensualist he could see a romantic girl that he could sometimes overwhelm, stretching those fleeting seconds into an entire, glorious night.  

He coiled his fingers through her wedding necklaces and used them to tug her onto her booted toes, her eyes flashing open, “You like it when I play with these don’t you, girlie?” he said, letting his voice fall into Slœgt’s rougher cadence and cruder language.  As he did, and without changing otherwise, he let the horns that crowned his new, improved Jotunn-self pierce him again, this time having enough experience to stop the blood flow. 

“Oh,” she gave a breathy sound and touched them.  

Somehow, though there should be little sensation in the dermal bone, his already aroused and always ready body thrummed with power and his erection began to ache, knowing the only thing that would soothe it would be the wet and heat found between his mate’s legs.

Mate?

Apparently the horns brought more with them than simply new opportunities for erotic play. 

“Tomorrow we escape, treasure.  Tonight,” he lifted her into his arms and reverting to his own voice, “I am going to share with you the bed that I unwittingly dreamt of you in for centuries, and show you what those dreams entailed.”

  
  



	11. So That Will Be Never, Then

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The debate rages on.

“Between the mortal and the divine.  Became the swaggering, hungry, sly, provocative, and subversive creature (he) was always meant to be.  The thorn in the side of the tyrant. The trap awaiting the prideful and the wicked. Neither creator nor destroyer but both... the Trickster’s song that was the essence… restored itself to harmony.”

  * The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp



 

Nora could tell that Loki was in a mood.  He had been since they had first entered the gleaming palace and then been escorted to a small for Asgard room, like a golden circle hung with silks and with a view of the city,  where Odin had been waiting to speak to them. 

Thor had muttered something about the room not having been opened since their mother’s death.  

Since their mother had actually DIED in it, Nora had eventually figured out by watching how the Allfather and the God of Thunder shied painfully away from a certain spot on the floor. By watching how Loki paced the space like an angry panther, circling and looking for something to swat down with a heavy paw.

Also, he kept doing that thing where he either made fists convulsively or played with his fingers.  

When Odin had called them both his sons the look on Loki’s face, a flicker of softness, of surprise, of weakness, had made her want to thank the old man, or punch him.  So she did neither.

When Loki thanked Odin for healing her he didn’t even choke on the words.  He was sincere. It hurt Nora a little bit when he bowed to his father as he spoke, knowing he only did it for her sake.  

When the Allfather had finally, after more than twenty years of family squabbling, agreed to accept that Thor was not going to agree to sit on his throne any time soon, the big guy had looked so pleased and so hurt at the same time.  Nora loved Thor and knew that he didn’t know what he really wanted any more than Loki did most of the time.

All it took was one visit to Starbucks with Thor, trying to watch him decide what to order to figure that out.  If you show up at a cafe and don’t even know if you want something hot, cold, or blended then you probably weren’t ready to be the King of Space.  Usually she got annoyed for the rest of the people in line and the baristas and ordered for him, telling him if he didn’t like it then tough.

That usually got a hilarious gasp from whoever was waiting on them, but the first time you threw hot soup over someone to get them to stop fighting over the remote with their brother pretty much eliminated the possibility of reverence.  He was just her goofy-ass brother in law to her.

Then Odin had dropped the big one, and for a few, heartbreaking moments of silence Nora was certain that Loki was going to accept.  

“Sorry, father, but no.  Nora would not be happy on Asgard, and certainly not as queen-”

“You would, of course, have to take a consort from one of the other noble families of the Nine Realms.  Your … wife could remain as your leman. It has never been the custom on Asgard, but it is common enough in other courts that I am sure you would find a princess or prince who would be willing to accept the arrangement easily enough.  Perhaps that Kiara, she seems like a practi-”

Loki’s low, ratcheting laugh had cut him off.  “That would be a most amusing conversation, but no.  As I was saying, Nora would not be happy on Asgard, I would not be happy causing Nora unhappiness that I might prevent.  So I will have to, again, say no.”

Odin rose, like a mountain in spring shaking off snow, his expression far from resigned.  “I would ask you to be less hasty, my son. I have been the AllFather for too long. Do not presume that I have no understanding of your feelings, for all that I do not understand your choice of bride,” he turned to Nora and narrowed his eye consideringly, a twist of amusement to his lips, “Do not  _ entirely _ understand it, at any rood.”  Then he turned to both of his children, “Your mother-, your mother calls to me from Valhalla.  I am weary without her. Take this one night to consider, for her sake if not for mine.”

That had not been a request. 

Now, back in Loki’s rooms, and in spite of his assurances, Nora was still wondering if his strange mood was due to his not being as certain as he was pretending to be that he was making the choice he wanted.  When he lifted her again and started to walk towards his bedroom - sorry, bed _ chamber _ , of course, she thought it might just be for the distraction.

“You know, you don’t have to carry me.  I’m starting to get a complex, like there is something wrong with my legs and you know it but won’t tell me because you’re worried about me getting upset,” Nora said, while nonetheless laying against Loki’s chest, her eyes closed.

His skin was always slightly cool, but the blood was warm beneath.  His heart was quick and sure under her cheek, playing her favorite song.

“I assure you that if there were anything wrong with you I would tell you the instant I discovered it, as I would need you to find a way to deal with how upset  _ I _ would be,” he spoke softly down to her, lowering his voice even further so it rumbled through his body, making her tremble a bit.  Twenty years and she was still just as helpless against her physical need for him, against his beauty and his endless, seductive tricks.  

Of course, she was also just as helpless against all of her other needs for him.  Even if they were to never touch each other again, she would be willing to sit with him every day and just talk.  Hearing his stories and making him laugh. 

Willing.  But desperately hard up.

“Bearing you in my arms is a simple delight, and by doing it I do not have to wait for your short, slow, mortal legs to find your way to our bed.  Additionally, it is easier for me to smell how deliciously wet you are when I hold you like this, my darling.”

My darling was never a good sign.

He really was in a mood.

Her legs were NOT short.  Slow, and getting slower, maybe, sure.  That was probably fair.

“You mentioned,” he said as he walked down the strangely long hallway towards where he kept the bed, “that you would repeat what we did for our fifth anniversary.”

“We can’t do that here.  For one thing we need a public place.  Probably back home. Maybe Vanaheim, but I’d prefer Chicago.”  

“Needless to say.  And I certainly cannot be dressed like this,” he added, “though what you are wearing might do, depending on where we decided on.”

“This is a coffee-shop outfit.  Or maybe a grocery store.”

“A grocery store might present an interesting challenge.  A laundromat … Perhaps? Regardless, in this case I referred to it as a reminder that there is no way that I would be able to remain on Asgard as long as that promise went unkept.  Or-” rather than using magic, he kicked open the door to his bedchamber hard enough that it shot across the room, barrelled through a window in a rain of glass, and down who knew how many stories, where a faint cry of ‘hey!’ could be heard, “for any other possible reason!” he snarled, taking several more large steps before tossing her onto a bed so enormous that under other circumstances she would have pointed and laughed.

But not now.  

He wasn’t just in a mood.  

If Nora had to guess, everything had finally caught up with his always iffy temperament and he was furious.  She knew him, and could read the signs when his tenuous hold on the rational had been overburdened by one too many blows to his ego or sense of self.  And lately there had been plenty to choose from.

At the his father, of course, but not just Odin.  At the year of his life that he had lost and could only remember as shadows, nightmares, and headaches, from what he had told her.  At the stress of suddenly being bombarded by prayers and curses from every corner of the Nine Realms as those who knew they worshipped him as well as those who didn’t were screaming for assistance after a year of unrelieved honesty and crushing boredom.  At her. 

For daring to consider that he _ shouldn’t _ give up his dream, give up the respect that he had been trying to win from his father for centuries, for someone who would be dead before he turned around. Metaphorically speaking.  

Nora never doubted for a breath how much she meant to Loki.  She also never forgot for an instant that when she was dead he would alone, for all of his brother’s love, for all of Charles’s service, Loki would be alone, in the universe, with his thoughts twisting and his heart broken and then God of her Irish mothers and fathers help everyone.

Especially him.

Getting tossed onto the bed knocked the wind out of her for a second, especially when she landed on the hip that had been bruised when he had tossed her OUT of bed on Sakaar while he was having that nightmare.  “Jeez, dude,” she muttered, rubbing the sore spot. “I thought we were finished talking about-”

Loki sat on the edge of the bed.  “Take my boots off,” he ordered, in a calm tone.  Somewhere between tossing her on the bed and sitting down he had changed into his armour.  

Minus the helm, which wouldn’t fit with the new horns. 

Nora raised an eyebrow at him. 

He turned and stretched a long leg out towards her, “You want me to be a king, you should be prepared to take orders.”

“I said if you wanted to be king, you should be,” she said tartly, but started in on the buckles at his knee and worked her way down.  “A king. Not my king. I don’t go in for that sort of thing. Monarchies. Empires. Oligarchies. They all suck.”

With an exaggerated flick she undid the last buckle at his ankle and then pulled the boot off, tossing it away and motioning for the other.  Pivoting slightly, he offered her his other leg. 

Fine.  She started on that one as well, and he lay back, hands behind his head and his eyes closed, a beatific smile on his thin mouth, “I would oft times lay in this very place and fantasize about a lovely woman, who was,“ he raised his head and looked at her, “admittedly in those fantasies naked, clothed only in masses of long curls,” he lay back down eyes closed again, “in my bed, disrobing me, after a day of battle.”

Nora hastily looked down, relieved to see her own clothing and hair.  “How boring. I would have thought you would have come up with something more imaginative.”

“No male is that imaginative when first discovering masturbation,” he sighed, “nor any female, for that matter.” 

As she finished on his boots and then started in on his vambraces, slicking her fingers over the dull gold and green leather.  The amount of work that had gone into them was extraordinary. Unconsciously, Nora rested her cheek on it, stroking over the designs.

Loki snapped his fingers, “Back to your task.  If you please?” 

“Really?” 

“You want me to be a king,” he sounded bored.  “Or is it the apple you seek? Renewal, youth and so many years gained?  After all, you do seem a bit  _ worn  _ today.”

Yup, he was out of his mind angry with her.

Tossing his arm to the side, Nora climbed on top of him, straddling his waist.  The decorative metal at the top of his cuisses bit hard into the backs of her legs, and she was stiff as hell after the last few days, so the insides of her thighs burned.  

Leaning down, chest to chest, her face inches above his, she was struck again, and again, and again, that one of the most beautiful, dangerous creatures in the universe belonged to her.  She had bought him at the low, low price of her entire heart, body, soul, mind, and life. 

He would have been cheap a hundred times the price.   And he still didn’t get it.

“I don’t want you to be a king.  I love you so much, and I want you to have whatever you want, whenever you want it.  I want you to have all of the acclaim you can’t get over not having, you idiotic prince!  I want you to show everyone how brilliant and gifted and … and  _ worthy  _ you are!  Because that’s what you’ve always wanted.  How many times over the years have you come this close, this fucking close, to taking over one of those resistance groups or rebel alliances we’ve … um … assisted?  As long as you don’t hurt anyone to get any of it, if that’s what it takes to make you feel whole then I want it all for you. 

“Even if I don’t understand it.  Running stuff is boring. God, do you remember how bored I was at CDV running customer service?  Stressed out and bored at the same time? You can have it! Fuck that!” Gulping, feeling her chest start to heave, she sat up, suddenly terrified that she might actually talk him into it.  After losing him, after all of the worry, after thinking he could be dead… 

“And if you think that I actually want,” she climbed clumsily off of him, and the huge bed, “that I actually want that apple?  Fuck you, too. Fuck you! Even if you become AllFather I wouldn’t take it,” she started pacing, arms wrapped around her middle, trying to stop herself, “I’ll go home, go back to Chicago.  I’ll be rich as hell and I’ll get old and die just like eve-”

Loki sat up quickly, looking at her from under hooded eyes, “Do you think I would allow you that luxury, princess?” he hissed.  “I would have you tied to this bed and gasping and begging with need, teasing your pretty cunt with my hand and your mouth with slices of the apple, only giving you release when you ate and politely sucked my fingers clean.”

Now she was just as mad as he was.  As well as being painfully, wretchedly aching for him.  It was unfair, she had just gotten him back and they were fighting.  “How do you think that would work out for you, Eddie?” she asked, her voice raspy with anger, as she wiped away a few frustrated tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.

He gave that dry, ratcheting laugh of his, “You only call me that when you are genuinely livid,” he stalked to her, and then, to her surprise, wiped the rest of her tears with his fingertips.  “Badly.”

“What?”

“I know it would go badly.  I know that you would never forgive me, that you should not.  But I would do it anyway, because I cannot bear the thought of your dying.  Then I would be the one wandering everywhere, sleeping and waking, searching for you.  I would make a terrible king, Nora, not because I would be bored, though I would be, not even by cause of my frankly difficult nature, but in that I would never be here, were you not.  I cannot be without you. When will you ever accept that you are more to me than everything else? That you are a wonder and a joy and sometimes a delightful trial? That my greatest ambition is to spend each day beside you?  And in you?”

“The same day you realize that I’m not going to come to my senses, recognize that you’re a monster and head for the hills.”

“So never, then?”

“That’s what we’re looking at, yes.”

Stepping in closer, so he loomed over her, he sneered down at her, “Kiss me, my little mortal,” he said, returning to character, back to playing his game.

“Little,” she snorted, “I’ll give you ‘little’ you stupid bull-”

He stopped her mouth with his, catching the scathing words and irritation, threading his gauntleted  fingers through her hair so he held her in place while he stole her will, her breath, her ability to stand.  He wrapped his arms around her so she was somewhere between cradled and crushed to him.

Again.

He was playing to win, using a little magic, a little force, all of his ruthlessness.

Nora knew she could stop the game at any time she wanted and Loki would capitulate, moving on to another erotic idea.

Which meant she was free to play to lose, if she felt like it.  She sagged in his arms, knees giving out, panting. With a wolfish smile he took her back to bed, the king with the serving girl, the conqueror with his captive.  It didn’t matter to Nora what story he was telling himself in his head, just how he played it out with her body.

He passed his hands slowly over her, and her clothing began to drag itself off of her as he watched, grinning.  Her sweater came unraveled, the buttons on her blouse neatly popped off, the cups of her bra caught on her nipples and then gently rubbed on them as she writhed. 

Her jeans and panties slipped effortless down her legs, her heavy, wool socks (because this stupid castle was freezing) coming apart like her sweater had.

“I can hear your undergarments leaving trails of wet down your legs, treasure,” he said.  “Clearly you enjoyed undressing me as much as I am enjoying this.” He ran his fingers along the insides of her thighs, moaning in appreciation, massaging firmly on the outside, then cupping and dipping in with his fingers but not touching any of the places she most wanted him to.  He stared into her eyes, his smile open mouthed and spiteful. “Frustrated?” he asked gently when she closed her legs around his touch, trying to trap his hand in the place she wanted it. 

She started to sit up, but he gestured with his free hand and her bra now dragged itself the rest of the way up, pulling her arms above her head, where it twisted around her wrists and then snagged on a suddenly protruding piece of Loki’s elaborate headboard.

“Hey!  That’s my most comfortable bra, don’t get it all stretched out!”  

“No, treasure, I promise,” he crooned unsympathetically, as the cashmere from her sweater wound itself around her ankles, yanking her legs roughly apart.  Now he worked at her in earnest, long fingers dancing over her clit until it was almost painful, but not steadily, not allowing her to find a rhythm, then as she still grew close to her orgasm, skittering away and into her, finding her g-spot, stroking it with the pads of his fingers too gently.  

Nora thrashed, wanting to roll over and hump on his hand like an animal.  “Are you messing with my brain again?” she panted out.

“No need.  My adorable,” he did something that felt like he was pinching softly at the spot he had been petting, while his other hand pressed against her clit, “little,” and again, “mortal.” One last time, sending her so close to the edge she thought her brain was going to fall off of it and she forgot everything but his hands and wanting to come.

“I know so many things about you…  And have so many tricks I haven’t shown you yet.”

He leaned over her, so their lips were almost touching, and then she felt his hand work it’s way into her, as her body eased and opened and took him in, “I remember the first time I touched you here, I was eating your delectable ass at the same time, lapping and fucking you with my tongue.  The sounds you made...”

Loki found the spot he was looking for and touched everywhere but it.  Nora’s body was burning, her skin was so hypersensitive that even the silk sheets beneath her were making her want to weep, everything in her was melting and she knew that he wouldn’t let her come until he was damn good and ready.

He sat back up, hand busy, head cocked, that same unkind smile on his face, “Now what have I forgotten to make this splendid tableau perfect?  Oh, yes…” he snapped the fingers of his free hand and a perfect, fragrant apple appeared balanced on his fingertips.

When he spread them, it turned into juicy, sweet-smelling slices that fell into his open palm.

Biting her lip, eyes closing, trying to ride out the wildness in his touch, she stuttered out, “Tha-, that’s not, that’s not-.”

He looked at her with a small frown between his eyes, “I must be losing my touch if you can still speak.” His fingers suddenly were longer and thicker but just as agile.  “Would that Idunn’s apples were so easily obtained. But no.”

Nora felt her mind start to slip away, giving up, giving in.

“I-. I-, I-, uhhhhhhhhh,” nothing else would come out of her mouth.

“Yes, treasure, you, you, you,” he held a piece of apple over her mouth, it’s nectar dripping down, slipping between her parted lips.  “Sweet, is it not?” he asked as she helplessly licked.

Whatever the apple was, it wasn’t a red delicious, because the second she tasted it her cunt practically prickled, swelling and softening and almost pulling his hand in, “Jesus…“ she moaned.

“Always the wrong god with you.  But then, he is famous for the mercy that I am utterly without,” he now traced the slice over and over her lips, dipping it between them, teasing and mimicking what he was doing to her below.  “Just one bite, princess, one little nip for your husband and I will make you so happy,” he crooned. 

Nora had just enough presence of mind to turn her head away.  

An inch.

Loki made a t’sking sound and pressed hard on something that made her flood the bed and cry out.

“You want it.  Your tongue is doing the most obscene things to this unworthy piece of fruit and you don’t even know it, so distracted are you by your own need.”

She dragged her eyes open, her lashes suddenly very heavy, and looked at Loki, his eyes gleaming green, his horns spiralling, apple dangling from his fingers.  

He actually was the Prince of Darkness.

The Catholic schoolgirl in her had always known this was going to happen, someday.

Her mouth fell open, “Please…” she begged.  

The fruit was cold from his touch, and sweet, and she ate it gratefully, licking his fingers clean. 

“Good girl,” he said, knowing she hated that and that there was nothing she could do about it, cupping the back of her head to pull her up into a kiss, as he now fucked her in earnest, all finesse lost to their joint need, “come for me now.”

Then, as ever ready to surprise, he dissolved and almost immediately reformed, kneeling between her legs, his cock buried in her, her legs over his shoulders, as he thrust hard, upward, while the heel of his hand pressed on her mons.

Now Nora dissolved, coming apart, screaming, her cunt spasming around him, pulling and pulling, as he pressed harder, driving another orgasm straight after the first, his own boiling over into her, the two of them gushing and he bit her calf hard enough to mark, her body no longer understanding anything other than feeling came one more time around his slowly softening cock.

Later, much later, as she lay surrounded by Loki who had pulled her back to his chest and coiled his arms and legs about her like great, lazy serpent, she croaked out, “Next time we play, it’s going to be ‘the SHIELD Interrogation Specialist and the Supervillian’...”

“My favorite,” he said, exhausted, stroking her hair until she fell asleep.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special love to my beautiful Beta, Caffiend, who took time out of a stressful mom-day to fix my literary crimes.


	12. Happy Anniversary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little coda at the end of what is one of my favorite stories in the Infinity Stone Playlist.

On the morning after Odin had offered Loki the very thing he had always wanted the Einherjar who went to fetch the dark prince of Asgard and his strange but friendly Midgardian consort to the All Father found the prince’s chambers empty. 

Not just of the prince and the strange but friendly consort, but of everything.  All of the furnishings, the books, the hangings and art works, the magical components and the endless chests of clothing and bathing accoutrements.  The endless bits and pieces that had been collected over the centuries by the magpie prince were gone, leaving nothing but a little dust and a few items that had clearly been deemed too broken or common to bother taking.

There was a disconcerting echo in the vast rooms.  

The sound of Loki’s laughter, that rang out as they moved from room to room. 

A large, white envelope sat on top of a stool with a broken leg that was in the place that had formerly held a replica of the Allfather’s throne.  It was addressed to “Dad.”

The guards played a quick game of Asgardian rock, paper, scissors (called Stone, Vellum, Dagger) to see which of them would have the honor of presenting it to the king.  

Eikbrandr lost.  

He always lost.

Fortunately Prince Thor, along with Lady Sif and the Warriors Three,  was with his father when the note was brought, and he was the one who took it from the very relieved Eik who he hastily dismissed.  

Thor stood at the foot of the great dias where the throne loomed above the Great Hall, waiting.  And waiting while his father stared at nothing and seethed in that way that Loki and Loki alone could inspire in others.  Bor knew Thor had seethed that way enough times himself to recognize it. He tapped the envelope. He looked around, noticing the new gilding work that had been done on the great pillars that he had knocked over when he and Loki had escaped with Jane and the Aether.  He pointed to it, nodding.

And the work on the ceiling was really first rate.

The Warriors Three nodded as well.  Sif was less impressed by good crown molding.

It was good work.  Lots of swirls and abstract wolves and ravens.  Very regal.

He tapped the envelope on his open hand a little harder.  

Finally, Odin put out a hand for the missive.  He read it. 

It clearly wasn’t long.

Then he crumpled it and with a sweep of his cape and a rush of wings from Hugin and Munin stood.  For a moment he looked at Thor as if he were about to speak and then shook his head and was gone, trailed by a dozen Einherjar, all marching at double-time to keep up with their furious god.

Without being bidden, Fandral retrieved the note, smoothing it out and waiting for everyone to gather and read it over his shoulder.

It wasn’t from Loki.

Nora’s handwriting was large and a little sloppy, but still clear.  Loki had only added his signature, with great flourish: 

 

_ Dear Odin, _

_ Sorry.  But thanks for breakfast.  It was really good, _

_ Best, _

_ Nora Lokiskauna _

_ Loki Norasmaðr   _

_ PS - I don’t know who makes those vanilla and lavender scone things, but you should make them the God of Pastry, if you don’t already have one of those.  Unbelievable. _

 

They all nodded that time, even Sif.  The  _ friðrbrauð _ were exceptional.  

 

Nora settled into her current favorite seat in her library aboard the  _ Naglikjóll,  _ Loki’s version of an Eames, with deep green suede in place of the black leather, overlooking the rest of the space from the highest of the balconies in what had formerly been the cargo hold of the ship.  There was a worn and often-read copy of  _ Wolf Hall  _ in her hand, a bottle of whisky on the table at her side next to steaming pot of Irish Breakfast tea and a large, red cup, her feet were covered in thick, lovely cashmere socks, and she had again stolen one of Loki’s robes.

This time the heavy quilted silk one, covered in elaborate gold embroidery, with deep pockets that produced a variety of truffles just by reaching into them.

Dark chocolate on the left, milk chocolate on the right.

The sound of Anne Phillip’s beautiful voice floated and swirled about her, singing “Born to Be Blue.”

Pouring herself a drink and pulling out a milk chocolate truffle dusted in sweet curry, she settled back for an evening of reading, entirely relaxed for the first time in over a year.  Charles was puttering about, joyous that with the return of his master there would be enough to do to occupy himself. Loki was no doubt enjoying his reunion with his beloved  _ Naglikjóll _ , with whom he still had a decidedly unhealthy fixation even after all of these years.  

Whatever.  He’d join her eventually.  She’d get him to read aloud to her until she fell asleep with her head on his chest, feeling his heart beneath her cheek, his long fingers stroking her hair, his voice growing deeper and softer as he felt her drifting off.

“TREASURE?!” Loki roared from the floor of the library.

Or not, she thought, happy that she had set the mug back down before he made her jump out of her skin.

Leaning over the wrought iron, created to mimic the balconies of New Orleans, she saw him scanning the different spaces for her since she refused him to allow the ship’s AI to monitor  _ her _ room.  “WHAT? YOU SCARED THE HELL OUT OF ME!”

There was a shimmer of green and gold he stepped through and then out next to her.

“Apologies, my love,” he said, kissing the top of her head and snatching a dark chocolate and bourbon truffle from her pocket.  “You stole my robe. Another of my robes. Again.”

“So?”  She wrapped it more firmly around herself.

“Just an observation.  You always leave my garments redolent from your radiant skin.  I am far from complaining but it does tend to diminish my concentration.  The last time you wore the linen one that produces  _ semlor _ I was so distracted I mistakenly combined frost dragon breath and venom from the horn of a corrupt unicorn and nearly melted my worktable to slag.”

“You shouldn’t wear that one when you’re doing physical magic anyway, the sleeves trail too much.  It’s a fire hazard. Anyway, you bellowed?”

Giving her a raised eyebrow and a bit of a frown at her description of what he doubtless considered his dulcet tones gently enquiring as to the location of his beloved rather what it actually was.  “I thought you might like to eat whilst we discuss… well… you know…” 

Loki looked away, a faint flush across his cheeks, his voice fading, shaded with just a hint of embarrassment.  

‘Oh, fuck,’ Nora thought, knowing what he wanted even before he spoke.

If the creatures of the Nine Realms were to be polled, asked if it were even possible for the God of Mischief to be flustered, to be capable of blushing, the resounding answer would be, “Are you fucking kidding?  It’s _ Loki _ .”  He one time when he was first of age his mother had decided it was time for him to learn more about governance, so she had him added to the Royal Council on Vanaheim.  It was customary for members of the council to wear ceremonial robes that had been part of the planetary regalia for generations.

Loki thought they were musty and had an “unflattering drape.”  When he was told in no uncertain terms he they were the only thing he could wear if he were to be allowed into the council chambers he had arrived naked instead.  

It was both the first and last meeting he attended, less for the outrage everyone expressed than for the jealousy of the other councillors.

“This is about our fifth anniversary, isn’t it?”

“Well, you did promise if I helped free the slaves on Sakaar, did you not my love?  And those slaves are free, so…”

He sat down in her seat and idly made circles with his fingertip on the arm of the chair, looking at her from under the hair that fell over his eyes, trying badly to pretend he wasn’t concerned with her response.  

It would be heartlessly easy to crush him.  And as much as Nora loathed the thought of hurting Loki in any way, knowing that she was one of the only beings that could do so, she just didn’t want to keep her promise.  What he wanted was agony, and humiliating, and she hated every second of it the last time they had done it, but he wanted it so  _ much _ .

Dropping her head, she nodded, “What did you have in mind?”

Standing with a wide grin that suggested he had slightly more teeth than was strictly necessary, he clapped his hands together, embracing her enthusiastically, “I realised my mistake last time, as we discussed recently, was location.  Yes, we do need to do this in Chicago, and in the correct setting! This time we will set the scene in our old offices. At CDV. Can you not picture it, Nora? The nostalgia, the inspiration of where our young love was formed?” he asked, spreading his hands, inviting her to share his vision, to revel in his inspiration.

Sadly, she could share it all too readily.

“What is it going to be called?” she asked, deeply afraid.

He smiled even wider.

 

The next two months were a chaotic vortex of activity.  The costuming wasn’t so bad, Nora thought, though her ass needed to be twenty years younger to wear the snugger version of her old work dress that she wore for the first three scenes.  And the auditions went well. Despite his deep jealousy at anyone touching her, they finally found an actor who could sing, was a good enough dancer to get around what Nora lacked in that department, was talented enough to play both Loki  _ and _ Eddie with the help of some magic and a lot of wigs, and was gay and happily married to be her leading man.

The sets were impeccable, it almost looked too much like the old customer service department.  

After not finding a theatre that was willing to put on the production, Nora broke down and just bought the Chicago Theatre outright, knowing that if they didn’t have the proper setting for what her husband considered his masterpiece -  _ The Outsourced Prince: A Musical _ \- he would alternate between temper tantrums and sullen pouting for the entire run of the play.

Which, hopefully, so hopefully, would be short.

The last time they had tried this - when she had starred in  _ The Prince and the Treasure: the Greatest Love Story of All Time: A Musical _ \- they had closed in a week.  

The problem wasn’t the story.   _ Cats _ was about … well, cats,   _ A Chorus Line _ was about auditioning,  _ Avenue Q _ was about puppets.  Story didn’t matter. What mattered were the songs.  The jokes were pretty hilarious. The pacing was right.  The dance numbers were peppy and fun. Even the romance was touching.  To her at least.

But the songs.  God, the songs were terrible.  Even though it was nice to know her divine husband wasn’t good at everything, this wasn’t how she wanted the world to learn it.  At least she had blocked any of the Avengers getting opening night tickets.

As she stood, waiting for the curtain to rise, ready for her first scene, she went over the lyrics to her first number in her head, the far from deathless, “We’re All Mad Here (but we do get Dental).”

“I woke up hungover

Sad and alone.

I haven’t even gone to work yet, 

And I’m  already ready to go home….

If only something would change,

If only  I my bosses weren’t deranged

If only …

If only…

If only…. 

I knew what only….

I’m so lonely…”

 

Her husband was brilliant, but a songwriter he was not.

Loki finished the last of his directions to actors playing him and Odin in the opening number - “There's No Place Like Home (but maybe you should keep looking)” which was probably the worst song in the whole play, other than “Being Human Takes Practice,” which was a ballad and just painful.

He took her hand, pressing a kiss to the back of her fingers.  “I confess to some nerves, perhaps we should have opened out of town, smoothed out a few of the rough patches.”

“There isn’t that much spackle in the universe,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Nora looked at him, at the adorable nervousness and thought of how close she had come to losing him.  How close he had come to losing himself, and was suddenly determined to make this stupid play the biggest hit imaginable.  It would be worth singing her heart out in the godawful last act duet, “Bewitched, Collared, and Bewildered,” just to see him triumph.

After all, he’d written all of this garbage just to immortalize their love.  The least she could do was pretend it was genius.

“I love you, husband,” she said, kissing him softly, her hand to the back of his neck.  She leaned into him, her heels off the floor as she pressed her lips up into his, her other hand on his shoulder.  He slid an arm about her waist to hold her closer, teasingly licking into her mouth, then adding a last, soft brush of lips that curved in to a smile. 

“Happy Anniversary.”

“Break a leg, princess.”

“If only,” she sighed, thinking that would be the perfect out.

“What?”

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to end this story in a way that was as silly as the start was heartbreaking, and I am hoping it worked.


End file.
